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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Historians who work in certain diaspora areas of the Mande people are frequently told by Mandekan speakers that their ancestors came from “Mande Kaba” (Kaaba). When reporting this, they usually then proceed to explain that Kaba is the Mande term for the French-named town of Kangaba, capital of the Mali empire. However, in my work on the precolonial state of Kong in northeastern Côte d'Ivoire, it became important to question exactly what this phrase means in the context of oral traditions and chronology.
The hypothesis equating Kaba, Kangaba, and the capital of the Mali empire dates back in print to the early French studies of ancient Mali, and particularly to Maurice Delafosse, that prolific writer on West African oral traditions, religion, and languages. In his 1912 magnum opus, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, Delafosse cited Kangaba, “sans doute” as the capital of the pre-Sunjata “royaume” of Mali. In his annotation of the French translation of the mid-seventeenth century compilation, Ta'rikh al-Fattash, Delafosse again presented this idea. The Ta'rikh stated that “[t]he town which served previously as the capital of the emperor of Mali was named Diêriba [jāriba]; following, there was another named Niani [Yan.”
In a note Delafosse explained that Diêriba “is also the name of the town called Kangaba on our [French] maps, which after having been the first capital of the manding empire, is still today the chief town of the province of Manding or Malli.” He was most likely relaying information from his interpretation of traditions as well as his own personal observations of early twentieth-century Kangaba. The Keita family, claiming descent from Sunjata Keita, the founder of the Mali empire, enjoyed political control of Kangaba, and were recognized as having held this position for some time.
Kaba is also pronounced Kaaba and is the Mande term for the town the French usually called Kangaba. It is found in the literature with both spellings. See note 28 below.
2. “Mandekan” means “Mande language,” or the language spoken in the geographical/cultural region known as the “Mande.” The core Mande area is the region on the Mali-Guinea borders of the Upper Niger river valley. See Bird, Charles S., “The Development of Mandekan (Manding): A Study of the Role of Extra-Linguistic Factors in Linguistic Change” in Language and History in Africa, ed. Dalby, David (London, 1970), 146–59Google Scholar; idem., ed., The Dialects of Mandekan (Bloomington, 1983); Dalby, David, “Distribution and Nomenclature of the Manding People and Their Language” in Papers on the Manding, ed. Hodge, Carleton T. (Bloomington, 1971), 1–13Google Scholar; Delafosse, Maurice, “Traditions historiques et légendaires du Soudan Occidental traduites d'un manuscrit arabe inédit,” Comité de l'Afrique française-Renseignements coloniaux (août 1913), 298nl.Google Scholar
3. Delafosse, Maurice, Haut-Sénégal-Niger, (3 vols.: Paris, 1912) 2:173.Google Scholar He did not cite his sources for this, but they were presumably his oft-cited “traditions.”
4. Kati, Mahmud, Ta'rīkh al-Fattäsh, ed. and tr. Houdas, O. and Delafosse, M., (3d ed. Paris, 1964), 66Google Scholar (trans.). See also Hunwick, J. O., “The Mid-Fourteenth Century Capital of Mali,” JAH, 14 (1973), 195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I indicate Mahmud Kati as the compiler of the Ta'rikh for convention, although the matter has been cast into doubt by Levtzion, Nehemia, “A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle by Ibn al-Mukhtar: A Critical Study of Ta'rikh al-Fattash,” BSOAS, 34 (1971), 571–93.Google Scholar
5. Kati, Ta'rīkh, 66 (trans.), nl.
6. Dieterlen, Germaine, “The Mande Creation Myth,” Africa, 27 (1957), 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the word kamablõ, Claude Meillassoux states that the etymology of kama is uncertain, but that bio is a “bâtiment percé de deux portes formant généralement entrée de la concession. C'est là aussi où le chef de famille accueille les visiteurs de passage.” See his “Les cérémonies septennales du Kamablõ de Kaaba (Mali) (5-12 avril 1968),” Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 38 (1968), 173n3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Emile Leynaud stated that kama means “le maître du ciel.” Leynaud, , “Clans, lignages et cantons,” paper presented at the Conference on Manding Studies, London, 1972, 11.Google Scholar
7. Dieterlen, “Mande Creation Myth,” 124-37; Meillassoux, “Cérémonies septennales.”
8. Delafosse, “Traditions,” 298n1; see also ibid., 376n6.
9. For a discussion of the funé caste in the Mande social system see Conrad, David C., “Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata,” JAH, 26 (1985), 33–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Blind Man Meets Prophet: Oral Tradition, Islam, and the Question of funé Identity” in Nyamakalaya: Energy of Action in the Mande World, eds. David C. Conrad and Barbara E. Frank, forthcoming.
10. Vidal, J., “Le véritable emplacement de Mali,” Bulletin du Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF (1923), 608.Google Scholar See also idem, “Au sujet de l'emplacement de Mali (ou Melli),” Bulletin du Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF (1923), 251-68.
11. Monteil, Charles, “Les empires du Mali,” Bulletin du Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF, (1929): 305–06.Google Scholar
12. Delafosse, Maurice, “Le Gana et le Mali et l'emplacement de leurs capitales,” Bulletin du Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF (1924), 513.Google Scholar
13. Niane, D. T., Soundiata. An Epic of Old Mali, tr. Pickett, G. D. (Harlow, 1979), vii.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., 73.
15. Ibid., 94-95.
16. Leynaud, , “Clans, lignages et cantons,” 11.Google Scholar
17. Leynaud, E. and Cissé, Y., Paysans malinké du Haut Niger (Bamako, 1978), 25, 25n9.Google Scholar Robert Pageard postulated a close Traoré-Keita connection for the Upper Niger that suggets higher positions of political authority for the Traoré in the Upper Niger than in contemporary versions of the Sunjata epic. See Pageard, “La marche orientale du Mali (Ségou-Djenné) en 1644, d'après le Tarikh Es-Soudan,” Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 31 (1961), 73-90 passim, esp. 80; idem., “Note sur le peuplement du pays de Ségou,” Journalde la Société des Africanistes, 31 (1961), 83¬90, passim, esp. 86. Dieterlen's collection of Mande traditions in the 1950s names Kaba, in the mythical period of the foundation of the world, the site of the building of the second sanctuary, and the place where Faro descended from heaven. Dieterlen, “Mande Creation Myth,” 129-30. It can be suggested that the role of Kaba in Dieterlen's presentation also represents the post-seventeenth-century central role that Kaba came to play for the Mande.
18. Dieterlen, Germaine, “Note complémentaire sur le sanctuaire de Kaaba,” Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 38 (1968), 185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19. Dieterlen, , “Mande Creation Myth,” 165.Google Scholar
20. Niane, D. T., “Recherches sur l'Empire du Mali au Moyen Age,” Recherches africaines, 1–4 (1959), 37.Google Scholar
21. Person, Yves, “Nyaani Mansa Mamudu et la fin de l'empire du Mali” in Le sol, la parole et l'écrit: Mélanges en hommage à Raymond Mauny (Paris, 1981), 2: 628ff.Google Scholar This paper is an unedited version of a paper of the same title presented at the Conference on Manding Studies, London, 1972.
22. Levtzion, Nehemia, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1973), 61.Google Scholar
23. Ta'rīkh al-Sudän, 278-79 (trans.). See Levtzion, , Ancient Ghana and Mali, 92–93Google Scholar, for a summary of the Jenne-Mali confrontation.
24. Person, , “Nyaani Mansa Mamudu,” 633.Google Scholar
25. Ibid.
26. Leynaud, , “Clans, lignages et cantons,” 12, 35.Google Scholar
27. Ranger, Terence, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa” in The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 230, 242.Google Scholar
28. Wilks, Ivor, Levtzion, Nehemia, and Haight, Bruce M., Chronicles from Gonja: A Tradition of West African Muslim Historiography (Cambridge, 1986), 47Google Scholar, where they state: “‘Kaba’ refers to the old town of Kangaba (often pronounced Kaaba) in metropolitan Mali. … Many of the Juula communities of the south-eastern dispersion still refer to their place of origin as Mande Kaba, by which they appear to mean the metropolitan region of imperial Mali rather than the town of Kangaba specifically.” If they were referring to the Mandé they could simply say Mande, without the Kaba addition, as many non-Watara informants do in Kong.
29. Wilks, Ivor, Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana (Cambridge, 1989), 58.Google Scholar
30. Ibid., 59. The description in the document of the worship there, as well as the word itself, clearly suggests the (kama)-blõ. Blõ means “vestibule,” as indicated in note 6 above. “Ba” means “large” or “great” in Mandekan. Thus “Balunba” or “Baluba” could very easily mean a great vestibule or sanctuary. The Arabic word “sanam,” which Wilks translates as idol, is not clear. Sanama in Arabic means height, summit, peak. This particular root does not mean idol, unless it is in a local usage. The fact that Wilks put “sanam” between brakets may indicate that he is also unsure of the translation.
31. “Amr Ajdādinā” in Wilks, /Levtzion, /Haight, , Chronicles from Gonja (Cambridge, 1986), 44.Google Scholar In a note to the section on Jighi Jarā, (47) the editors write: “The sobriquet ‘Jighi’ is Malinke, having the sense of One worthy of trust, one who is brave.’ … Jighi was customarily used as a by-name for Māsā. Jar(r)a (and in some dialects Jata) is also Malinke and means, literally, ‘lion.’ The Hon had a totemic significance for the Keita rulers of imperial Mali, and several of the Malian kings bore Jar(r)a or Jata as a name.”
32. Binger, , Du Niger au golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi. (2 vols.: Paris, 1892), 1:56–58, 323–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33. Bernus, Edmond, “Kong et sa région,” Etudes éburnéennes, 8 (1960), 247.Google Scholar It is also interesting to note a 1937 citation from Dominique Traoré, writing on the ancestral village of the founder of the Watara state in Kong: “In the French Soudan, in Bamako Circle, of the same subdivision, in the canton of Morimadougou, on the right bank of the Niger river, six km from Figuila-Koro, is found a village by the name of Mandé-Bôlô.” Traoré, Dominique, “Notes sur le royaume mandingue de Bobo,” L'Education africaine, 96 (1937), 58.Google Scholar For the word “bolo” see the discussion in notes 6 and 30 above.
34. See Delavignette, Robert Louis, Paysans noirs (Paris, 1931)Google Scholar for the desire of Watara in Burkina Faso to obtain positions of authority in non-Watara villages, citing historical rights to rule that the French apparently accepted. Often, after many disputes, these Watara were then removed.
35. “Table ronde sur les origines de Kong,” Annales de l'Université d'Abidjan, ser. J, 1 (1977), 306-09. Fagamanden is translated in the French as prince; fagamancé as chief; and masa as king. These translations are problematic, but the terms are not easy to translate with one-word equivalencies due to the connotations that must be understood with each. Faga oxfanga is a term for physical force and thus implies power based on military strength rather than necessarily a hereditary right. Masa more often implies a hereditary right to power.
