¹ See Law, Robin, “Early Yoruba historiography,” HA 3(1976), 69–89.Google Scholar

² Rev.Johnson, Samuel, The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (London, 1921; reprinted Lagos, 1937, and frequently thereafter).Google Scholar For assessments of this work, see Falola, Toyin, ed., Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch: Samuel Johnson and the Yoruba People (Madison, 1993)Google Scholar; Doortmont, Michel R., “Recapturing the Past: Samuel Johnson and the Construction of the History of the Yoruba” (Doctoral thesis, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, 1994).Google Scholar

³ See Drake, St. Clair, “The Responsibility of Men of Culture for Destroying the Hamitic myth,” Presence Africaine 24/25 special issue, 2nd Congress of Negro Writers & Artists, Rome, 26 03–1 April 1959, 228–43.Google Scholar

⁴ Seligman, C.G., Races of Africa (4th ed.: London, 1966), 61, 100.Google Scholar

⁵ E.g., Oliver, Roland & Fage, J.D., A Snort History of Africa (Harmondsworth, 1962), chaps 4–5Google Scholar; Fage, , A History of West Africa (Cambridge, 1969), 8–10Google Scholar; Oliver, Roland & Fagan, Brian M., Africa in the Iron Age, c.500 B.C. to A.D. 1400 (Cambridge, 1975), 41–2, 67–9.Google Scholar In a later formulation, Fage abandoned the hypothesis of the Egyptian origins of African kingship, but still posited a critical role for conquering Saharan pastoralists in the process of state-formation in the Sahel: A History of Africa (London, 1978), 39–43, 61–9.Google Scholar

⁶ Lange, Dierk, Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa: Africa-Centred and Canaanite-lsraelite Perspectives (Dettelbach, 2004).Google Scholar

⁷ Saunders, Edith R., “The Hamitic Hypothesis, Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective,” JAH 10(1969), 521–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Cf. “Putaya,” the name given to the province formed in this area after its conquest by Persia in 512 BCE: Olmstead, A.T., History of the Persian Empire (Chicago, 1948), 149.Google Scholar

⁹ Saunders, , “Hamitic Hypothesis,” 521–22.Google Scholar This view is contested by Isaac, Ephraim, “Genesis, Judaism and the Sons of Ham,” in Willis, John Ralph, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa (2 vols.: London, 1985), 1:75–91Google Scholar; but the latter's own account in detail concedes that the idea of blackness deriving from a curse on Ham does occur in certain Talmudic texts (88, 90n44). See also Goldenberg, David M., The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Princeton, 2003), 102–06.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Goldenberg, , Curse of Ham, 99–102.Google Scholar

¹¹ Strictly, the classic “curse of Ham” represented the conflation of two stories which were originally distinct: the Biblical story of a curse condemning the descendants of Canaan to slavery, and the post-Biblical story of a curse of blackness on the descendants of Ham collectively: for this development, see ibid., 170-74. Goldenberg finds the origin of this “dual curse” in Christian and Islamic (but not, initially, Jewish) sources from the seventh century onwards, or even more specifically (ibid., 170) “in seventh-century Arabia.” However, the earliest source explicitly cited is of the eighth century.

¹² Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975), 539–41, 553–54.Google Scholar

¹³ Lewis, Bernard, Race and Color in Islam (New York, 1971), 66–67.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Barbour, Bernard and Jacobs, Michelle, “The Mi'raj: a Legal Treatise on Slavery by Ahmad Baba” in Willis, , Slaves and Muslim Society in Africa, 1:125–59.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Saunders, , “Hamitic Hypothesis,” 524–27.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Lynch, Hollis R., Edward Wilmot Blyden, Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (Oxford, 1967), 55–56Google Scholar; for an example of his argument, see an aside in the lecture “Philip and the Eunuch” (1882), reprinted in his Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (London, 1887), 154n2Google Scholar; Du Bois, W.E. B., The Negro (London, 1915), 30–34.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Some other languages of sub-Saharan Africa, including Fulani and Maasai, were sometimes included incorrectly in this group. The term “Hamitic” for these languages is now obsolete: see Greenberg, Joseph H., The Languages of Africa (2nd ed.: Bloomington, 1966), 41–65.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Saunders, , “Hamitic Hypothesis,” 528Google Scholar; Speke, J.H., Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (London, 1863), chapter 9.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Curtin, Philip D., The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (2 vols.: Madison, 1964), 2:411–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Fulani were variously supposed to descend from Persians or Carthaginians, or even to have immigrated from Malaya. Note, however, the alternative suggestion that the Fulani were descendants of Put (or Phut), son of Ham, on the basis of the Fulani toponym “Futa,” apparently first in d'Eichthal, Gustave, “Histoire de l'origine des Foulahs ou Fellans,” Mémoires de la Société d'Ethnologie (Paris) 1/2(1841), 1–294.Google Scholar

²⁰ SirJohnston, Harry, A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races (London, 1899; 2nd ed., 1913), chapter 1.Google Scholar

²¹ See Parfitt, Tudor, The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth (London, 2002)Google Scholar, though this seems weak on West Africa.

²² E.g. Smith, , Migrations of Early Culture (London, 1915)Google Scholar; idem, The Diffusion of Culture (London, 1935).

²³ Frobenius, Leo, The Voice of Africa, trans. Blind, R. (2 vols,: London, 1913).Google Scholar

²⁴ As explicitly asserted in the conclusion of his book: ibid., 2:680. I am fortified in this reading of Frobenius by the fact that this is clearly how the significance of his work was seen by the pioneer Afro-American historian, Bois, W.E.B. Du: see Law, Robin, “Du Bois as a Pioneer of Africa History,” in Keller, Mary and Fontenot, Chester J. Jr., eds., Re-Cognizing Du Bois in the Twenty-First Century: Essays on W.E.B. Du Bois (Macon GA, 2007), 45–64.Google Scholar

²⁵ In the Islamic tradition, Nimrud is considered a son of Canaan; rather than, as in the Old Testament, of Cush.

²⁶ Arnett, E.J., The Rise of the Sokoto Fulani, Being a Paraphrase and in Some Part a Translation of the Infaku'l Maisuri of the Sultan Mohammed Bello (Kano, 1922), 16.Google Scholar

²⁷ Reference to Baghdad probably reflects its eminence as the seat of the Caliph, the (nominal) supreme ruler of all (Orthodox) Muslims, between 762 and 1258.

²⁸ al-Idrisi, , in Levtzion, N. and Hopkins, J.F.P., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge, 1981), 109Google Scholar, referring to Salih b. 'Abd-Allah b. al-Hasan b. al-Hasan b. al-Hasan b. ‘Ali b. Abi Talib. Ibn Khaldun later commented that “this Salih is not known among the descendants of 'Abd Allah b. al-Hasan:” ibid., 320.

²⁹ Hunwick, John, ed., Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Tarikh al-sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents (Leiden, 2003), 5–6.Google Scholar

³⁰ Hallam, W.K.R., “The Bayajidda Legend in Hausa Folklore,” JAH 7(1966), 47–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³¹ Although it has also been suggested that “Bayajjida” should be identified with Abu Yazid, leader of an Islamic sectarian uprising in Tunisia in the late eighth century CE: Palmer, H..R., Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London, 1936), 273–74.Google Scholar

³² Conrad, David C., “Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata,” JAH 26(1985), 33–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³³ Robinson, David, The Holy War of Umar Tal: the Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1985), 82–84.Google Scholar The claim is already found in Muhammad Bello's Infaq al-Maisur.

³⁴ First recorded by Said, Ibn, in Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, 188.Google Scholar

³⁵ Kuba, Richard, Wasangari und Wangara: Borgu und sein Nachbaren in historischer Perspektive (Hamburg, 1996), 98–148.Google Scholar

³⁶ Another version makes Kisra clash with “Anabinuhu,” i.e., the Prophet Noah: Frobenius, , Voice of Africa, 2:617.Google Scholar

³⁷ Johnson, , History, 3–4.Google Scholar

³⁸ For discussion, see Law, Robin, “How Truly Traditional is Our Traditional History? The Case of Samuel Johnson and the Recording of Yoruba Oral Tradition,” HA 11(1984), 195–221, esp. 202–05.Google Scholar

³⁹ E.g. Hallam, , “Bayajidda Legend,” 49–50Google Scholar, accepting the identification of “Bayajidda” with the historical Abu Yazid (see note 31 above), supposed that remnants of his army might have fled south into West Africa, following his defeat and death in Tunisia.

⁴⁰ Fage, , History of West Africa, 9–10Google Scholar; Lange, , Ancient Kingdoms, esp. 277–85.Google Scholar

⁴¹ First recorded in the ninth century: Morris, John, ed., Nennius: British History and Welsh Annals (London, 1980), 18–20.Google Scholar Note that this work also supplies a genealogy tracing the ancestry of Brutus to Javan, son of Japhet, son of Noah (and beyond to Adam and Eve).

⁴² Conrad, “Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali.”

⁴³ For the context see Robinson, , Holy War of Umar Tal, 81–89.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Fage, , History of West Africa, 9.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For Islam in Borgu see Levztion, Nehemiah, Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (Oxford, 1968), 173–78Google Scholar; for Oyo see Law, Robin, The Oyo Empire c.1600-c.1836 (Oxford, 1977), 75–76, 255–60.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Stevens, Philips Jr, “The Kisra Legend and the Distortion of Historical Tradition,” JAH 16(1975), 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It should be noted that the defense of the historicity of the Kisra traditions by Stewart, Marjorie Helen, “The Kisra legend as Oral History,” IJAHS 13(1980), 51–70Google Scholar, although cast in part as a critique of Stevens, does not relate to the alleged Persian connection.

⁴⁷ For the Oyo case see further Law, , “How Truly Traditional?,” 204–05.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ As noted already in the 1790s: “[t]hey evidently consider all the Negro natives as their inferiors; and when talking of different nations, always rank themselves among the white people:” Park, Mungo, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (London, 1799), 46.Google Scholar This statement has to be understood in its local (Senegambian) context, in which “white” (Arabic bidan) denoted (patrilineal) Arab descent and free status, rather than skin color.

⁴⁹ Frobenius, , Voice of Africa, 2:617–20.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Equiano, Olaudah, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself (2 vols, London, 1789), 1:38–41.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Horton, James Africanus, West African Countries and Peoples (London, 1868), 167–71.Google Scholar This example is missed by Parfitt, Lost Tribes.

⁵² See Law, Robin, “Local Amateur Scholarship in the Construction of Yoruba Ethnicity, 1880-1914” in de la Gorgendière, Louise, King, Kenneth, and Vaughan, Sarah, eds., Ethnicity in Africa: Roots, Meanings and Interpretations (Edinburgh, 1996), 55–90, esp. 56–63.Google Scholar

⁵³ Johnson, , History, 3–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Lucas, Archdeacon J. Olumide, The Religion of the Yorubas (Lagos, 1948).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Sibthorpe, A.B.C., Bible Review of Reviews: the Discovery of the Ten Lost Tribes, Yorubas or Akus (Cline Town, Sierra Leone, 1909)Google Scholar, for which, see Fyfe, Christopher, “A.B.C. Sibthorpe; a Tribute,” HA 19(1992), 327–52.Google Scholar This example is also missed by Parfitt, although he does allude to other theories of exotic origins of the Yoruba (referring to Frobenius, Samuel Johnson, and Biobaku): Lost Tribes, 199, 203.

⁵⁶ Biobaku, S.O., The Lugard Lectures–1955 (Lagos, n.d.)Google Scholar; reprinted as The Origin of the Yorubas (Lagos, 1960).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ For Johnson's “purely patriotic motive,” see History, vii.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 7.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 9; for other claims that Yoruba traditions contained “garbled forms of scriptural stories,” explained as “showing that the ancestors of the Yorubas were acquainted with Christianity in their land of origin,” cf. ibid., 148, 154.

⁶⁰ Law, Robin, “Constructing ‘a Real National History:’ a Comparison of Edward Blyden and Samuel Johnson” in Farias, P.F. de Moraes and Barber, Karin, eds., Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa (Birmingham, 1990), 78–100, esp. 96.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Afigbo, A.E., “Traditions of Igbo Origins: a Comment,” HA 10(1983), 1–11.Google Scholar

⁶² Zachernuk, Philip S., “Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerian Historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’, c.1870-1970,” JAH 35(1994), 427–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotations from 430, 454-55. For an application of the argument in a wider context, cf. Zachernuk, Philip S., Colonial Subjects: an African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville, 2000).Google Scholar

⁶³ Zachernuk himself does make this point in general terms in Colonial Subjects, 6-7, but he seems to lose sight of it in relation to the “Hamitic hypothesis.”

⁶⁴ See Law, , “Constructing,” 84–88, 98.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ For a contrary view see Zachernuk, Philip S., “Johnson and the Victorian Image of the Yoruba,” in Falola, , Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch, 33–46.Google Scholar In particular, Zachernuk argues that Johnson was responding to the work of Ellis, A.B., The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1894).Google Scholar This connection is confessedly “inferred,” since Johnson nowhere explicitly cites Ellis. But in any case, the argument of Ellis that Johnson supposedly sought to refute was not the “Hamitic hypothesis,” but rather his “evolutionist” interpretation of Yoruba religion.

⁶⁶ Johnson, , History, 538–60.Google Scholar Most, and perhaps all, of these critical comments seem to be the work of Johnson's posthumous editor, his brother Dr Obadiah Johnson.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 5-6, citing Denman, Dixon and Clapperton, Hugh, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa (London, 1826), Appendix XII, 165.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Zachernuk, , “Johnson,” 40–41Google Scholar, argues that rudimentary versions of the “Hamitic” theory of Yoruba origins can already be found in Bowen, T.J., Adventures and Missionary Labours in Several Countries in the Interior of Africa from 1849 to 1856 (Charleston, 1857)Google Scholar, and Burton, Richard F., Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains (2 vols.: London, 1863).Google Scholar The former does indeed posit “large immigrations of white people into Africa,” producing a partly “mulatto” population in much of West Africa, including Yorubaland (pp. 267-69, 276-80), but although he stresses the “somewhat civilized” character of the Yoruba, he does not relate this explicitly to the supposed admixture of “white” blood; while the latter work likewise hypothesizes a “stream of immigration from the lands nearer Arabia,” but explicitly regards the Yoruba as “a race of pagans” displaced by this immigration, rather than deriving from it (1:231). In any case, here again, Johnson does not cite (or show any evidence of acquaintance with) either of these works. Another writer of the 1850s identified the Yoruba as descendants of Canaanites dispersed from Palestine by the Israeli conquest (in the thirteenth century BCE), and more explicitly linked this to their relative “civilization.” But this work was still unpublished when Johnson wrote: Clarge, W.H., Travels and Explorations in Yorubaland, 1854-1858, ed. Atanda, J.A. (Ibadan, 1972), 287–92.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Lucas, , Religion, 3–4, 344–45.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ For his critique of Frobenius, see ibid., 347-52.

⁷¹ ChiefOjo, S., Bada of Saki, Iwe Itan Oyo, Ikoyi ati AFIJIO (Oyo, n.d. [ca. 1961]), 16–17.Google Scholar

⁷² The pioneer of the integration of the Borgu legend of Kisra with Yoruba traditions of origin (as reported by Johnson) seems to have been Hermon-Hodge, H.B., Gazetteer of Ilorin Province (London, 1929), 115–21.Google Scholar

⁷³ “Educated natives of Yoruba are well acquainted with the history of England and with that of Rome and Greece, but of the history of their own country they know nothing whatever! This reproach it is one of the author's objects to remove:” Johnson, , History, vii.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Again, this point is made by Zachernuk in general terms, in Colonial Subjects, 66, but he does not apply it to the case of the “Hamitic hypothesis.”

⁷⁵ Burns, A.C., History of Nigeria (London, 1929), 32–33Google Scholar; Niven, C.R., A Short History of Nigeria (London, 1937; 3rd ed., 1948), 64–65.Google Scholar Also Niven, C.R., A Short History of the Yoruba Peoples (London, 1958), 6–7.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Zachernuk, , “Origins,” 453–54.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ ChiefFabunmi, M.A., Ife, the Genesis of Yoruba Race (Lagos, 1985).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Fajemisin, Canon R.A., Primacy in Post-Oduduwa Yorubaland (Ilesa, 1984).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Zachernuk, , “Origins,” 451–52.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Johnson, , History, xxi–xxiiGoogle Scholar; for the claim of Johnson and other early local historians to the distinctiveness of the Yoruba, see more generally Law, , “Constructing,” 91–92Google Scholar; idem.,”Local Amateur Scholarship,” 79-82.

⁸¹ Law, , “Early Yoruba Historiography,” 78.Google Scholar