The urban systems of medieval Mali

Journal of Historical

Geography, 7, 4 (1981) 341-355

The urban systems of medieval Mali Christopher Winters

Urbanism in medieval Mali was closely connected with long-distance trade but conforms only partly to Vance’s mercantile model. Local periodic markets also existed, arranged in a pattern similar to that outlined in Skinner’s modification of Christaller’s central place theory, although they were not always connected with cities and were subsidiary to the long-distance trading system. Many aspects of urbanism in medieval Mali, however, had little to do either with long-distance trade or with local marketing and may be analysed more lucidly by invoking cultural phenomena than through established models of urban systems.

Several theories or, really, groups of theories have been proposed to account for the relationship of cities to each other and to the countryside surrounding them. On the one hand, central place theory, as proposed by Christaller and elaborated by Liisch and others, implies that the provision of goods to a nearby tributary area is the basic urban activity and from this notion derives a hierarchical system of nested settlements.[ll On the other hand, the mercantile model of Vance, and somewhat similar conceptions of a few other scholars, involve the idea that often urbanism has been more clearly connected with external forces such as longdistance trade. Under these circumstances urban spatial patterns derive largely from the demands of a trading system. ~1 A third theoretical approach to urban systems identifies urban productivity and especially urban industrial productivity as a determining element in urban status.L31All these theories propose economic factors as the fundamental determinants of the relationship of cities to each other and to the surrounding countryside. Although these ideas were originally proposed to account for aspects of urbanism either in the western world or in its colonial offshoots, certain of them have been [l] W. Christaller,

Die zentrale Orte in Siiddeutschland (Jena 1933); A. LGsch, Die riiumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft (Jena 1941) [2] J. E. Vance, Jr., The merchant’s world: the geography of wholesaling (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

1970). Two models involving a spatial system very much like that of the mercantile model, but associating it essentially with underdevelopment, are described in E. J. Taaffe, R. L. Morrill and P. R. Gould, Transport expansion in underdeveloped countries: a comparative analysis Geographical Review 53 (1963) 503-29; E. A. J. Johnson, The organization of space in developing countries (Cambridge, Mass. 1970) 83-92 [3] The material on the basic/non-basic ratio would seem to do this. Described in D. S. Rugg, The spatial foundations of urbanism (Dubuque 1979) 177-86 and in other textbooks. See also A. Pred, Industrialization, initial advantage and American metropolitan growth Geographical Review 55 (1965) 158-85. Notions intended to apply chiefly to cities of the industrial age are not dealt with in this paper, although urban artisanry, especially weaving, certainly played some role in the success of Timbuctoo and Jenne. The three groups of theories identified here correspond closely to the three types of city identified by C. D. Harris and E. L. Ullman, The nature of cities Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 242 (1945) 7-17 0305-7488/81/040341

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used to gain insight into the workings of urban systems in other cultural contexts. Central place theory in particular has been a starting point for several studies of non-western urban traditions.tll But few if any studies have examined pre-colonial African urbanism in the light of theoretical work on urban systems.r21 In this paper I examine the applicability of theoretical work to urbanism in medieval Mali, that is, Mali from the beginning of Islamicization in the ninth and tenth centuries to the coming of colonialism at the end of the nineteenth century. During this entire period Mali had cities of a sort. Urbanism probably dates back even further in the extreme southeastern part of neighbouring Mauritania, which in early times was intimately tied to what is now Mali. Unfortunately, there are enormous problems in obtaining information about medieval Malian urbanism. Archaeology, as elsewhere in Black Africa, has yielded only modest results, largely because urban buildings, invariably built of impermanent materials, have left few traces.t31 The major source of information on Malian urbanism is written documentation. This documentation provides little quantitative data and leaves many gaps, and since it was largely written by foreigners (no local language has a natural written form) it must be used with caution. Nevertheless, it is probably richer than that which exists for any other part of Black Africa, It consists of: descriptions by North African travellers and geographers, going back to the ninth century;r41 travel books by Portuguese explorers and traders from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;t51 Arabic-language chronicles written in Timbuctoo in the [l] C. A. Smith (Ed.), Regional analysis (New York 1976) [2] There has been a considerable literature on African marketing systems, for example, P. Bohannan and G. Dalton (Eds), Markets in Africa (Evanston, Ill. 1962); B. W. Hodder, Some comments on the origins of traditional markets in Africa south of the Sahara Trunsactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (1965) 97-105; B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, Markets in West Africa: studies of markets and trade among the Yorubu and Zbo (Ibadan 1969); C. Meillassoux (Ed.), The development of indigenous trade and markets in West Africa (London 1971). Although Hodder (in “Some comments” op. cit.) and others conclude tentatively that long-distance trade preceded local trade in areas of Africa about which they are writing, most literature on marketing does not relate its findings very clearly to theories of urban systems [3] Archaeology has been far more successful in the drier and less impermanently constructed cities of the Sahel than in those of the Siidan. R. Mauny, Tableau geogruphique de I’Oaest africain au moyen age d’apres les sources &rites, la tradition et I’archeologie (Dakar 1961) 5675, 92-126 [4] Some of the more important of these works are: al-Ya’qtibi, Kitab al-bald&t (891) translated by G. Wiet, Les pays (Cairo 1937); Ibn Hawqal, Kitab smut al-urd (988) translated by M. G. DeSlane, Description de I’Afrique (Parts 1842); al-Bakri, Kitab al-mascilik wa’l mumalik (1067-8) Arabic text plus French translation by M. DeSlane, Description deI’Afriqueseptentrionule (Algiers 1911 and 1913, reprinted Paris 1965); al-Idrisi, Kitcib nazhat al-mushtrig fi ikhtiraq &if&q (1154) Arabic text plus French translation by R. Dozy and M. J. deGoeje, Description de 1’Afrique et de 1’Espugne (Leiden 1866, reprinted Amsterdam 1965); al-‘Umari, Musulik al-absur fi mamdlik al-amscir (1342-9) Arabic text plus French translation by G. A. U. Gaudfroy-Demombynes, L’Afrique moins I’&gypte (Paris 1927); Ibn Batttita, Tuhfut al-nuzzur fi gharti’ib al-amstir wa-‘uja’ib al-usfar (1352-3) Arabic text plus French translation by C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages d’lbn Butoutah, IV (Paris 1922) partial translation by S. Hamdun and N. King, Zbn Battutu in Black Africa (London 1975); and L. Africanus, The history and description of Africa and of the notable things therein contained (1526) translated by J. Pory (1600), R. Brown (Ed.), (London 1896) [5] L. de Cadamosto, NavegucGes (1455-7) Italian text plus Portuguese translation by G. Carlo Rossi (Lisbon 1946); V. Fernandes, Description de la co^te d’Afrique de Ceuta au Senegal (1506-7) Portuguese text plus French translation by P. de Ceneval and Th. Monod (Paris 1938); and V. Fernandes, Description de la tote occidentale d’Afrique (1506-10) Portuguese text plus French translation by Th. Monod, Texeira da Mota and R. Mauny (Bissau 1951)

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seventeenth century; ~1 numerous European eyewitness accounts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;t21 and recent compilations of local oral traditions by African scholars.t31 Mali’s past has also attracted a strikingly large amount of scholarly attention since the French conquest.r41 In addition, elements of the medieval urban culture have survived vestigially to the present, opening a window on to the past. Thus it is possible to sketch at least the general outlines of an urban tradition which until recently had few connections with the West and which offers tantalizing new ground for testing urban theories. Malian urbanism and longdistauce

trade

Malian pre-colonial urbanism seems on the surface to have been connected almost exclusively with long-distance trade, in particular with the trans-Saharan gold trade. The trans-Saharan gold trade may have originated in classical times,t51 but its heyday lasted from the ninth or tenth centuries into the early twentieth century. Throughout this period its essential feature was the movement of gold north and salt south. By the standards of the medieval Muslim world gold was abundant and easily worked in a number of places in West Africa, for example, in the headwaters of the Senegal and Faleme rivers (Bambuk), in the northern part of modern-day Guinea (Bure), and in parts of modern Ghana.rsl Salt, on the other hand, was found in massive quantities in the Sahara but was scarce in the gold-bearing lands to the south. The fact that salt in these regions had medicinal as well as culinary functions added to the demand.171 There are tales, perhaps exaggerated, that sometimes gold was exchanged at its sources for an equal weight in salt. [I] Al-Sa’di, Ta’rikh al-Sudan (c. 1655) Arabic text plus French translation by 0. Houdas (Paris 1900); and Ibn al-Mukhtar/al-Ka’ti. Tu’rikh al-Futtash (c. 1665) Arabic text plus French translation (Paris 1913) [2] M. Park, Travels in the interior districts of Africa performed in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 with an account of a subsequent mission to that country in 1805 (London 1816); R. Caillie, Journal d’un voyage a Tombouctou et a Jenne’ dam I’Afrique centrale . . . (Paris 1830); H. (Heinrich) Barth, Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa . . . (London 1857-8); and F. Dubois, Tombouctou la myste’rieuse (Paris 1896) [3] A. Hampate Ba and J. Daget, L’empire peul du Macina (2818-53) (Bamako 1955); D. T. Niane, Sundiuta: an epic of old Mali (1960) translated by G. D. Pickett (London 1965) [4] Some of the more important of these works are M. Delafosse, Ham-Se’negal-Niger (Soudan francais) (Paris 1912); P. Marty, Etudes sur l’lslam et Zestribus du Soudan 4 vols (Paris 1920); C. Monteil, Une cite soudanaise: Djenne’, mhtropole du delta central du Niger (Paris 1932); Mauny, op. cit. ; J. Gallais, Le delta inte’rieur du Niger: Prude de geographic regionale (Dakar 1967); G. Brasseur, Les e’tablissements humains au Mali (Dakar 1968); N. Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London 1973); D. Tamsir Niane, Le Soudan occidental au temps des grands empires XZe-XVP siecle (Paris 1975); S. Mody Cissoko, Tombouctou et I’empire Songhay: Ppanouissement du Soudan nigerien aux XV-XVI’ siecles (Dakar and Abidjan 1975); M. Ly Tall, L’empire du Mali contribution a I’histoire de [‘empire du Mali (XZZZe-XVIC si&cles): limites, principales provinces, institutions politiques (Dakar and Abidjan 1977). This is a very partial list [5] Herodotus provides evidence of a small-scale trans-Saharan trade in gold in Classical times, but does not indicate whether this trade originated in subsaharan cities. Herodotus, Histories translated by G. Rawlinson (London 1964), I Book IX, 196, p. 363; and R. Mauny, Les siecles obscurs de I’Afrique noire (Paris 1970) 78-l 17 [6] On the gold trade Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 293-306; E. W. Bovill, The golden trade of the Moors (London 1968) [7] Fernandes, “C&e d’Afrique” op. cit. Port. 86/Fr. 87

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Figure 1. The medieval trading network. This is a composite map, showing routes and cities from many centuries. The route structure changed substantially over time, and as it did so some cities declined and others prospered. More detailed maps, keyed to particular time periods, have been published in R. Mauny, Tableau ge’ographique de I’Ouest africain au moyen &ge (Dakar 1961). Cartography by Alastair Shedden.

As the trade system evolved, many items besides gold and salt came to be exchanged.[ll Copper was at times in as much demand as salt in parts of West Africa; it too is scarce in the south but relatively abundant in the Sahara. In later centuries still other, largely luxury items were added to the north-to-south trade: horses, cowry shells (which were used as money), as well as various kinds of manufactured goods, including high-quality fabrics. In exchange, numerous items moved north: slaves, above all, and various tropical products such as spices, ivory, civet musk, ostrich feathers and gum arabic. Other commodities, however, reached no further north than the Sahel. Of these kola nuts were the most important. There was also inter-regional West African trade in iron, in the products of local artisanry, in rice and other foodstuffs. As the gold trade slowly dried up toward the [l] Overviews in Mauny, “Tableau”

op. cit. 356-80; Levtzion, op. cit. 171-82

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close of the Middle Ages, this inter-regional trade boomed as if in compensation, following very much the same north-south routes. In other words, long-distance trade over the centuries came to span shorter and shorter distances. From the ninth century onward, long-distance trade was closely associated with cities. These cities acted as entrepots and break-of-bulk points. Entrepots were established along the north-south trade routes where major climatic or ethnic boundaries were crossed or where goods had to be repacked. In the later trading system, from the fourteenth century on, the most important entrepots were situated in the Sahel, at the meeting of desert and Savannah, and in the Sudan, where Savannah slowly gave way to forest.[ll Both in the Sahel and in the Sudan the nature of trade changed abruptly. Trade across the desert was in the hands of Berbers and Arabs : it was carried by camel and it followed a very limited number of routes-from an enormous part of West Africa trade would funnel into one trans.-Saharan route. Trade south of the Sudanese cities, on the other hand, was controlled exclusively by Black Africans. Because of the humidity camels could not be used, and because of the tsetse fly mammals could be employed only seasonally, so goods were mostly carried by human porters with some help from donkeys and pack cattle. And, owing to the scattered gold sources and dispersed outlets for northern products, the route structure south of the Sudan was extremely complex. Between the Sahel and the Sudan there was a mixing of ethnic groups and modes of transportation, and here the route structure changed over the centuries, but from about the fifteenth century it focused on the Niger River upstream from Timbuctoo and also on the city of Jenne, located on a small stream off the Bani, a major affluent of the Niger. Canoes, often capable of carrying many tons of merchandise, were used for this part of the journey. Timbuctoo and Jenne in this period, like their predecessors, were classic break-of-bulk points, nodes on a trading network that extended from the Mediterranean to the Guinea coast. Like earlier Sahelian-Sudanese pairs they developed a symbiotic relationship, Jenne serving as a collecting point for foodstuffs destined for Timbuctoo, which was too far north to be self-sufficient in agriculture. In the long-distance trading system the two cities played geographically complementary roles as relay points. In the sixteenth century Fernandes described Timbuctoo as “the entrepot of all the gold which is exchanged . . . for salt”,r21 whilst al-Sa’di, a resident of Timbuctoo in the seventeenth century, wrote of Jenne that “it is only because of this blessed city that caravans from all points on the horizon flock to Timbuctoo”.t31 Malian cities were so dependent on trade that when the trade routes changed, as they did often, one set of cities would wither and another set would rise to replace it. Over the centuries there was a slow movement of trade eastward owing to the decline of salt production at Teghaza and of gold production at Bambuk and the substitution of Taudenni and modern-day Guinea and Ghana as sources of these staples. As this happened the main urban axis also shifted. The earliest important Sahelian cities, other than Gao, were Awdaghost and later Ghana, both in modern Mauritania. Tn the thirteenth century Ghana was partially replaced by [l] Properly, the Bilad al-Sudan, “land of the blacks”. Both the Sahel and the Siidan run from the Atlantic coast to the foothills of Ethiopia. In later centuries a third set of cities, including Kong and Wagadugu, grew up at the approximate meeting of Savannah and forest for very much the same reasons, in Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, and Guinea [2] Fernandes, “C&e d’Afrique” op. cit. Port. 84/Fr. 85 [3] al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 1 l-2/Fr. 22-3

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Walata, and in the fourteenth century Walata was superseded by Timbuctoo. In the Sudan the shift was more complex and less is known about it, but there seems to have been a comparable movement east. Awdaghost and Ghana appear to have traded south to, and through, a series of entrepots on, or close to, the Senegal River, whereas by the fourteenth century Niani had become Mali’s major Sudanese entrepot. Jenne probably became important in the fifteenth century.[‘l It is true that dozens of other cities are mentioned in the sources. With a few exceptions, such as Segu and Sansanding, most of these are difficult to identify and have presumably long-since disappeared. In general, Sudanese entrepots, apart from Jenne, seem to have been more ephemeral than the Sahelian cities. Sudanese cities, associated with a geographically complicated pattern of trading, were less firmly rooted than Sahelian cities, serving trade in the Sahara, limited to a few routes by the absence of sufficient water anywhere else. Trade was not the only reason for the rise and fall of cities. Political factors were also important, at least in so far as they affected trade routes. The movement of the major urban axis eastward took place in the eleventh century in a period of instability in the western Sahara. At this time the Almoravid movement helped to weaken Ghana, the first major West African state, whose decline in turn caused political power to shift south and eventually east to new states, in particular to Mali, centred on the modern Mali-Guinea border.r21 With the rise of Mali, new cities became important, including its capital, Niani, but the increasing status of these cities, while partly connected with their political role, was also a function, first, of blocking the older trade routes and, secondly, of opening the Niger as a trade artery when Mali came to control the territory through which the river passed. Some idea of the dominance of trade in the determination of urban status may also be gained from the fact that the city of Ghana remained an important entrepot for some centuries after it lost most of its political power.r31 Even after the fifteenth century the general pattern of trade, and with it the broad outlines of the urban system, remained extraordinarily stable despite continuing political turbulence. The rise of the empire of Songhay in the fifteenth century seems to have had little effect on the geography of commerce, although it gave a new importance to its capital, the ancient city of Gao, helping it to supplant Tadmekka as an east Sahelian entrepbt. Trade continued along much the same lines during the complicated political changes of later centuries, including the conquest of most of modern Mali by Moroccan forces in 1591 and rule by a series of small, short-lived local states from the late seventeenth century on. Through all this time urbanism in Mali seems to have been based on a trading system that had originated centuries earlier.t41 Even the establishment of European trading posts in Senegambia from the fifteenth century did not break the basic pattern. The desires of European traders were accommodated with only minor modifications to the African trading system. The European factories, so far as Mali was concerned, simply provided a new market for gold and slaves and new sources of salt and manufactured goods, and along the southwestern boundaries of Mali new entrepots grew up to take advant[l] [2] [3] [4]

A controversial date. Monteil, op. cit. 30-9 This is a simplification of a by-no-means clear sequence of events. Levtzion, op. cit. 16-62 Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 724 J. Ralph Willis, The western Sudan from the Moroccan invasion (1591) to the death of al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1811), pp. 512-54 of J. F. I. Ajayi and Michael Crowder (Eds), History of West Africa I (New York 1976) 520-l

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age of this new long-distance trade.tll At the same time, the old trans-Saharan trade continued. But, very slowly, as the gold trade was diverted west and then south, the Sahelian entrepdts lost much of their prosperity.t21 Nevertheless, elements of the old system survived into the colonial period. Even now there is salt trade between Taudenni and Timbuctoo, and salt is still carried on the Niger to Jenne. In general, however, Timbuctoo, Jenne and other surviving medieval towns have stagnated in the twentieth century, while Bamako, Kayes, Segu and Mopti, connected by railroad and highway with the outside world, have become Mali’s major cities. ~1 They have succeeded the older cities for the same reason the older cities became dominant in earlier centuries: they have better external connections. To a surprising extent, Vance’s mercantile model offers a basis for interpreting Malian urbanism. External demand for staples animated Malian cities, not (at the beginning anyway) local demand for low-order goods. The cities of the Sahel. located as they were on the edge of the desert, had few people in their immediate hinterland to demand anything. The most intense linkages of the Sahelian “pointsof-attachment” such as Timbuctoo were north to the Maghrib and south to Siidlnese “depots of staple collection” such as Jenne. Arguably, the latter gradually became “entrepots of wholesaling” as new collection centres such as Kong were formed further south in the forest. The geography of long-distance trade, as suggested in the vocabulary of the mercantile model, may explain the broad pattern of urbanism in medieval Mali even more lucidly than it does in colonial nineteenth-century America. In attempting to apply the ideas of the mercantile model to medieval Malian urbanism we are left with a problem: it would be quite wrong to call Mali’s economic system mercantilism. There was little of the self-conscious large-scale competitive searching for sources of raw materials and for markets for finished goods that characterized European mercantile practice. At no time were states particularly active in opening up trade routes. Even in the North African states trade was based on laissez-faire economics. Sometimes states did try to incorporate trade routes and mines, but this was chiefly to acquire revenues: commerce was taxed. Mercantilist theory was not involved in such taxation. Its purpose was to enrich the court. Almost certainly the largest-scale organization involved in the trans-Saharan trade was connected with the Maqqari family, whose members in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were scattered from Tlemcen in modern Algeria to Niani.t41 The Maqqari even seem to have undertaken the upkeep of certain caravan routes. But they were evidently quite exceptional. Most trans-Saharan trade appears to have been conducted either by individual entrepreneurs or else by small, ad hoc groups of merchants. While trans-Saharan caravans were of necessity tightly organized, after a crossing, caravans’ members would often go their separate ways.r51Similarly, in and south of the Sudan, while some reports speak of traders having hundreds of slavesr61and other reports mention brotherhoods [l] Tall, op. cit. 89-101 121 Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 441 [3] On Mopti see Gallais, op. cit. 488-550, 567-600 141 H. Perks, Relations entre le Tafilalet et le Soudan B travers le Sahare du XIIIe au XIV’ si&cle, pp. 409-14 of Mdanges gPographiques et orientalistes @rts ci E. F. Gautier (Tours 1937) [S] Ibn Battfita, op. cit. Arab. 376-83/Eng. 22-6 161 Fernandes, “C&e d’Afrique” op. cit. Port. 86/Fr. 87

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of merchants,r’J much entrepreneurship was on a modest scale. Mostly it was in the hands of people who have come to be called Dyula. In recent centuries Dytila have typically been peddlers, building up their trade through seasonal settlement among the intermarriage with peoples south of their Sahelian homeland.r21 Trade on this scale does not suggest anything we would want to call mercantilism. Working in general on such a small scale and without the direct support of governments, Malian traders, unlike European merchants, did not have the resources to found cities. Some of the places that were to become important cities, including Timbuctoo and Jenne, were at first small villages with minor political functions. They blossomed as they found themselves at important points on trade routes. The process was described by al-Sa’di: “Timbuctoo was founded by the Tuareg [nomads] . . . They chose the site of this town as a store for their property and grain . . _ It was passed by travellers going to and fro . . . Then people began to settle there . . . They came from all directions until the town became a market for trade”.L31 A similar process transformed purely agricultural villages south of Jenne into Dytila trading towns.[41 Elsewhere trade settled on appropriately located political centres. Awdaghost and Ghana were perhaps in this category.[51 There is no reason to think that any of these towns were founded by merchants. On the other hand, many of them can be said to have been urbanized by merchants whose trade transformed them into settlements increasingly devoted to non-primary pursuits. In other words, long-distance trade in medieval Mali was an animator of urbanism rather than a creator of cities ex nihilo. Malian urbanism and local marketing In addition to long-distance trading entrep6ts medieval Mali also possessed local markets. The questions of what the role of these markets was and when they originated are important in assessing the extent to which central place theory can be made to fit Malian urbanism. Elsewhere in Africa the existence of local markets has been taken by students of central place theory as evidence to support Christaller’s schema. But because most of the markets have been periodic, place in the hierarchy has been identified as much with frequency as with the order of goods for sale.161 Skinner’s work on a marketing system in rural China has provided a basis for this identification.r’l From the historical record it is difficult to deduce any detailed information about early local markets. The first North African writers are silent on the subject but this is not surprising in view of their own connection with long-distance trade. Some supported their travels by engaging in commerce on the side, while others derived their information wholly from merchants. There aYe scattered references to what may have been local markets from the fourteenth century on. Ibn BaQtita [l] L. G. Binger, Du Niger au golfe de GuinPe par le pays de Kong et le Mossi par le Capitaine Binger (Paris 1892) I, 141-4 [2] Y. Person, Samori: une re’vohtion Dyufa I (Dakar 1968) 95-122; Gallais, op. cit. 474-82: Monte& op. cit. 262-3 [3] al-Sa’di, op. cif. Arab. 20/Fr. 36 [4] Monteil, op. cit. 34 [S] Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 384 [6] B. J. L. Berry, Geography of market centers and retail distribution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1967) 94-9 [7] G. William Skinner, Marketing and social structure in rural China Journal of‘ Asian Studies 24 (1964) 3-43; 24 (1965) 195-228, 363-99

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mentions that a group with whom he travelled from Niani to Timbuctoo “stopped every night in a village to buy what we needed of food and clarified butter in exchange for salt and perfumes and glass ornaments”.rll This would at least suggest that some local products were marketed, or in any case bartered. Elsewhere Ibn Batttita describes women selling things ;rzl women would probably not have been engaged in long-distance trade. In the sixteenth century Leo Africanus mentions the use of iron money, as opposed to gold or cowries, for purchasing everyday products. I31 In addition, Portuguese writers describe local periodic markets on the coast.[41And, according to the Tu’rikh aZ-S&in, in the seventeenth century, “in the territory of Jenne . . . numerous markets are held all the days of the week”.r51 Nineteenth-century European writing on Mali leaves no doubt about the existence of predominantly local periodic markets,rel but not enough information is provided to reconstruct the whole system or to estimate its antiquity. Is it possible that periodic markets predated long-distance trade? Raymond Mauny thinks in some places they may have. ~1 Yves Person argues this point even more strongly. ~1 The fact that so many local periodic market systems rotate through cycles of other than seven days suggests they predate the coming of Islamic traders. Such markets would, in early times, have been useful in facilitating interethnic exchange. In much of West Africa, and in Mali in particular, several economically specialized ethnic groups lived side by side. The markets would have been places where, for example, Fulani herders would exchange their milk. Bambara farmers their millet, and Bozo fishermen their dried smoked fish. But were such places really markets? They were probably places where reciprocal moneyless exchange rather than price-fixing marketing occurred.rgl Before we posit the existence of a central place system in early medieval Mali we should remember that no ineluctable connection between periodic markets and settlements has been observed either in Mali or elsewhere in Africa. Many markets have been held in the open countryside. Even if markets were set up before long-distance trade there is no reason to infer they were the nuclei of cities. During the period for which we have knowledge, roughly coinciding with the period of unambiguous urbanism in Mali, all evidence suggests that local periodic markets were not clearly distinguished from the smaller markets connected with long-distance trade. Few if any local periodic markets were exclusively local in orientation. A major purpose of these markets was to provide an outlet for Saharan salt and later forest kola and other products. The need to acquire salt may have been the chief reason for these markets. In many smaller markets salt was the major form of money used.[lOl Local markets also came to serve as collectting points for goods that would eventually find their way into long- or at least medium-distance trade. In the nineteenth century, and possibly much earlier. a Ibn Batti?a, op. cit. Arab. 432/Eng. 53 Ibid. Arab. 393_4/Eng. 32 Leo Africanus, op. cit. 822 Cadamosto, op. cit. Ital. 54-5/Part. I 14-I 5; Fernandes. *‘C&e occidentale” op. cit. Port. 68/Fr. 69 [5] al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 13/Fr. 24-5 [6] Park, op. cit. I, 355; CailliC, op. cit. II, 169, 170-1, 238; Binger, op. cit. 1, 26 [7] Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 354-6 [8] Person, op. cit. I, 89-92 [9] The terms are Karl Polanyi’s. G. Dalton (Ed.), Primitiw, nrchaic, and modern economies: essays of Karl Polanyi (Boston 1968) [IO] Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 420

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large proportion of the population in the Niger valley seems to have been producing dried smoked fish and grains for the urban entrepots.[il An additional function of local markets was to provision merchants engaged in long-distance trade. Ibn Batfuta mentions examples and so, nearly five centuries later, does Rent? CailliC.tZ1 In the early nineteenth century a periodic market at Kaka was frequented by “merchants from all the races, Dyula from Kong [in modern Ivory Coast], Hausa from Nigeria, Fulani, Tukulor [probably from Senegal], Tuaregs [from the southern Sahara], and even Arabs”. r31Local markets in medieval Mali. far from being independent of the long-distance trading system, seem to have been subsidiary to it. This pattern has continued in the twentieth century. Periodic markets flourished under colonialism and have continued to do so since Mali became independent in 1960. In places they are arranged in a geographical pattern resembling a basic Christaller model, but no one who visited these markets would affirm the existence of a central place system in West Africa, at least in so far as a notion of endogenous markets is considered a significant feature of central place theory. Even low-order markets are likely to offer imported tea and sugar. All but the most remote present an array of products from all over the world. Cloth and powdered milk from Holland, mosquito coils and toothpaste from China, canned peas and sardines from Senegal or France, Nescafe from Ivory Coast, and candy and matches from Bamako make their way into the furthest corners of Mali. They do so, having passed through contemporary entrepots such as Mopti along the colonial and post-colonial long-distance trading routes. The same routes are followed by primary products from neighbouring regions, including kola nuts, dried smoked fish and grain. Local grain, milk and vegetables are also sold in the markets, but frequently goods from distant places account for a larger share of the total sales. Is this really surprising? Most Malians even today are predominantly self-sufficient peasants, herdsmen or fishermen. Although there has been a slow commercialization of traditional primary production, many people use markets only to obtain goods that must be imported from distant places. This was surely even more the case in the past. While local exchange may have preceded long-distance trade, movement of local products through anything resembling an urban system was stimulated by the activities of long-distance traders. The geography of Mali’s urban system has never more than secondarily reflected the requirements of local retailing. To analyse this urban system as a central place system would distort the data.

Cultural elements in the urban system of medieval Mali Many aspects of the urban system in medieval Mali may be explained neither by long-distance trade nor by local marketing. They seem to have been connected with cultural traditions rather than with economic forces. The contribution of cultural traditions cannot easily be plugged into geo-

[I] CailliB, op. cit. II, 238 etc [2] Ibn Battiita, op. cit. Arab. 3934/Eng. [3] Ba and Daget, op. cit. 79-80

32; Caillik, op.

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169 etc

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graphy’s usual view of cities.[ll The mainstream of urban geography, at least in English-speaking countries, has concentrated on the economic functions of cities,[21 and it is in this area that the most elaborate theories have been fashioned. Although considerable evidence has accumulated that in many urban traditions-especially in the ancient world-economic factors were distinctly secondary,[31 theories on the cultural role of cities have hardly progressed beyond the classificatory stage. The study of urbanism in cultural perspective has proceeded through the identification of “ideal-types” in which aspects of urbanism are related to world culture patterns.141 This approach implies too simple a notion of the relationship between culture and urban form, and invites a rather superficial view of individual cultures. It is not an accident that it appears most convincing where data are thin! Nevertheless, it offers a possibility of viewing broad patterns of world urbanism succinctly and intelligibly. Black Africa is one place where this approach offers real insights. Over a large part of Africa, from Ghana and Upper Volta to Angola and Uganda, pre-colonial urbanism, although by no means a uniform phenomenon, was tied to the role of kings.r51 Cities throughout this area were first and foremost sites of royal courts which were sustained by systems of tribute and taxation. The flow of resources to a capital was enforced by a king’s control of the military, but it was justified by his role as a religious figure. The older Africanists spoke of “divine kingship”.r61 Cities in Black Africa thus had intermixed administrative, military and religious roles. Marketing tended to be secondary if it existed at all. In some cases redistribution systems, centred on the capital, accounted for a large proportion of exchanges. Almost everywhere kings went to some trouble both to control traders and to keep them at a distance. Although urbanism has frequently been connected with kings in the forest lands south of the Sahel and the StidBn, some evidence indicates that the earliest urbanism in Mali and in the area around was also fostered by the king. The first cities of which we have a description-eleventh-century Ghana and Gao-were twin cities.[‘l While one part of these cities was a merchants’ city, the largest buildings of which were mosques, there was also a royal city, centred on the palace of a non-Muslim king. In Ghana the latter also contained a grove where the state’s magicians lived, where idols were kept, and where king’s tombs were built.[sl [I] An almost random sampling of some works on the cultural role of cities, the first two by non-geographers: L. Mumford, The culture ofcities (New York 1938); R. Redfield and M. B. Singer, The cultural role of cities Economic Development and Cultural Change 3 (1954) 53-17 ; R. Murphey, The city as a center of change: Western Europe and China Annals of the Association of American Geographers 44 (1954) 349-62; P. Wheatley, The pivot of the four quarters: apreliminary inquiry into the origins and character of the ancient Chinese city (Chicago 1971); J. E. Vance, Jr., This scene of man: the role and structure of the city in the geography of Western civilization (New York 1977) [2] M. Conzen, Analytical approaches to the urban landscape, pp. 128-65 of K. W. Butzer (Ed.), Dimensions of human geography: essays on some familiar and neglected themes University of Chicago Research Paper 186 (Chicago 1978) [3] Wheatley, op. cit. ; H. Carter, Urban origins : a review Progress in Human Geography 1 (1977) 12-32 [4] C. Winters, Traditional urbanism in the north central Sudan Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67 (1977) 500-21, esp. 500-I [5] Ibid. esp. 512-20 [6] L. Mair, African kingdoms (Oxford 1977) 21 [7] al-Bakri, op. cit. Arab. 175/Fr. 71-2 [8] Ibid. Arab. 17%6/Fr. 72-3

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As similar features accompanied royal rule in many parts of Black Africa it is difficult to escape the inference that they predate large-scale commerce in Ghana. Could royal rule thus have been at the root of urbanism in Mali and neighbouring Mauritania as it seems to have been in other parts of Africa? The earliest North African travellers talk more of commerce than of kingship, but they almost surely exaggerated the importance of commerce. It seems most likely that there was a symbiotic relationship between merchant and king. Merchants were attracted by the prospect of trade in, and through, a prosperous state, while kings encouraged them to come, partly because trade could be taxed and partly because through trade kings could gain a monopoly on imported horses, important in military technology.[ll There is no way to tell which came first-king or long-distance trade-but in early medieval Mali urban nodality seems to have been at least as much connected with a very African kind of administration as with long-distance trade.r21 Remnants of this system persisted in later centuries. The capitals of later empires-Mali’s Niani and Songhay’s Gao-continued to function as administrative centres in addition to acting as commercial centres. Their political centrality was reinforced by a custom widespread in the ancient world: sons of provincial rulers were taken to the capital practically as hostages.[31 In these cities also the quarter of the king remained distinct from the quarter of the merchants and the latter group clearly had to accommodate the king. To enter Niani merchants needed the king’s permission. c41The power of the king over the merchants was rooted in the fact that, even though most kings of Mgli and Songhay were nominally Muslim, they remained in many respects “divine” rulers.L51 Several smaller places were either founded or adapted as royal administrative centres, for example Tendirma under the Songhay.[sl Even Timbuctoo and Jenne, which would eventually become trading towns, were at one time political centres. Both cities had local rulers living in royal palaces for centuries.f71 Jenne, in particular, was the political node of a substantial region and is said to have remained pagan until perhaps 1300 when its ruler, partly influenced by merchants, adopted Islam and built a large mosque to replace his palace.[*l How much was the earlier Jenne a city of long-distance trade? How urban was it? It is not easy to answer these questions. From perhaps the fifteenth century, long-distance trade made Jenne an important place, but some evidence indicates that it first acquired some centrality and urban status as a royal administrative centre. As late as the nineteenth century, Sikasso and Segu, capitals of small states, [l] Mauny, “Tableau” op. cit. 368-70 [2] Curiously, Ibn Khaldtin, writing in North Africa, suggests [in Kittib al-‘Ibar, translated by M. G. DeSlane, Histoire des Berberes . . . (Paris 1925, reprinted 1969) II, III] that state formation preceded trade: “The kingdom of Mali [he wrote] acquired such importance that the merchants of the Maghrib and Ifriqiyya [Tunisia and Libya, more or less] went there to engage in commerce” [3] For other examples of cities with a “centripetalizing function” see Wheatley, op. cit. 257-68. For MBli see Niani, “Sundiata” op. cit. 36; for Songhay see al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 6/Fr. 10-l 1; for Ghana see al-Bakri, op. cit. Arab. 176/Fr. 72 [4] Ibn Batfiifa, op. cit. Arab. 397/Eng. 33 [5] A detailed summary of the evidence is presented in Levtzion, op. cit. 106-14; for less detailed descriptions of some non-Islamic practices of medieval kings see Cissoko, op. cit. 175-80 [6] Ibn al-Mukhtar, op. cit. Arab. 179/Fr. 314 [7] Tall, op. cit. 44-5; al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 12-13/Fr. 33-4 [8] The date is controversial. Monteil, op. cit. 38-9; Mauny, ‘*Tableau” op. cit. 115-16

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to have been much more centres of royal administration than of marketing.l*J Little but salt and kola made its way to them along the trade routes. Food for the cities’ inhabitants was acquired by taxation and by seizure. The economic system even in these examples of late medieval urbanism involved redistribution more than marketing. With the slow spread of Islam, however, it appears that trade gradually came to dominate unambiguously the life of certain cities. The connection between Islam and the muting of kingly rule as an urban function on the one hand and the rise of trade on the other was not accidental. As Islam was adopted the underpinnings of royal rule were lost, while trade grew partly because it was so ineluctable a part of the medieval Muslim culture complex. It is significant that Jenne’s first Muslim king, after replacing his palace with a mosque, prayed for “foreigners in the city [to] be more numerous than natives, and [for] patience [to] be taken away from those who come to the city for trade, so that they will grow tired of it and sell their wares to its people cheap so that the latter will make great profits”.r”l The connection between Islam and trade was reinforced, as elsewhere in West Africa, by the fact that merchants were a key element in the diffusion of Islam. For centuries the lone Muslim trader has been an archetypal figure in West Africa, engaging in commerce well south of the slowly moving frontier of Islam, creating an interest in the new religion as he peddled his northern wares.[31 Although the fully functioning Islamic town was almost by definition a commercial centre, it was more than that. With Islam came new functions connected with religion. Timbuctoo and Jenne became important centres of Islamic learning, Timbuctoo from the second half of the fourteenth century, Jenne somewhat later.r41 Timbuctoo in particular came to have an elite of learned men and maintained a university for centuries. It has been estimated that from one-fifth to one-quarter of the population of Timbuctoo consisted of students in the sixteenth century.t51 At this time as many people must have been concerned with education as with trade. Indeed, many were employed in both education and trade. In general, learning followed commerce. Only after Timbuctoo replaced Walata a major entrepot did Walata’s elite migrate to Timbuctoo.[61 Jenne’s status as a centre of learning also seems to have arisen only after it became an important centre of trade. This pattern has continued. In the twentieth century Mopti, which boomed owing to its position on the colonial trade routes, eventually became a religious centre. Even teachers of religion have to eat. In a few places, however, Islam has played an independent role as a creator and sustainer of urbanism. In Mali, as elsewhere in Black Africa, Islam has been associated with holy men, usually called marabouts in formerly French West Africa.[‘l Some of these men have been learned teachers of orthodox Islam, members of one or another sect or brotherhood. Others have been practically magicians, performers of miracles and dispensers of charms to cure impotence and other ailments. Several cities in medieval Mali were closely associated with seem

[l] Brasseur, op. cit. 403-17 [2] al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 12-13/Fr. 24 [3] Person, op. cit. I, 95-122 [4] On the special role of Jenne as a religious center for the nomadic Fulani in the early nineteenth century see Ba and Daget, op. cit. 22, etc [S] Cissoko, op. cit. 160 [6] al-Sa’di, op. cit. Arab. 21/Fr. 36-7 [7] Winters, op. cit. esp. 506-9; V. Monteil, Marabouts, pp. 88-109 of J. Kritzeck and W. H. Lewis (Eds), Islam in Africa (New York 1969)

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maraboutisme. Of these, Dya, identified with a town mentioned by Ibn Bafluta, was the most famous.rll This city was run by a theocratic elite, who seem to have made their living at least as much from religion as from trade. Many of those trained there went elsewhere to teach, founding settlements as a bi-product of their teaching. For example, Saro is said to have been founded by a man of the Traore clan who had studied “thaumaturgy” at DyZ. At the time the place was occupied only by an encampment of fishermen, who made their fortune selling supplies to those who flocked to see the holy man. r21In this way, Saro acquired a commercial role. Eventually, it became an important political centre, challenging Segu, then the capital of a state encompassing much of Mali. Saro did badly in a series of wars in the nineteenth century and is today a small market town. But DyZ has maintained its status as a centre of conservative unorthodox religion. It is the site of a well-known pre-Islamic monument and therefore an object of pilgrimage; it is the major dispenser of magic charms in its region; and it is the home of many marabouts. Its religious services cost money, many of its inhabitants work parttime as peddlers, and its masons are widely renowned and so build houses for miles around, but otherwise Dya has very little economic role. Its elite has refused to allow a market to be established there. Neither would they permit a colonial administrator to take up residence.l”l Dya’s status is reinforced by the fact that it is remembered as the ancestral home of the Soninke, a major west-Sahelian-Sudanese ethnic group.r41 At present Dya’s inhabitants are engaged largely in primary activities, but for most of the twentieth century Dya has had a larger population than Jenne. Is a place of such cultural importance really unurban? Despite its minute economic role it has played a significant role in Mali’s urban system. Between 1819 and 1864 Islam sustained an even larger and more important city, Hamdallai, whose religious and administrative roles overshadowed its economic functions.151 Hamdallai was the capital of Masina, a theocratic state established by the Fulani leader Shehu Amadu, who, like other Fulani leaders in the early nineteenth century in Northern Nigeria, Cameroon, and Senegal, led a jihiid to purify Islam. Hamdallai very quickly acquired a population of 20,000 and was quite self-consciously organized as a centre of an ascetic, politicized Islam, with little provision for commerce. Tenenku was another Fulani capital established in the same years. It is true that Hamdallai disappeared completely and Tenenku came close to extinction when Masina was conquered in the 1860s by the Tukulor marabout El Hajj Omar. Like many other political capitals, Hamdallai was shortlived, but for a time it was the most important city in Mali. Close reading of the primary sources on Malian urbanism suggests the existence of many places as ephemeral as Hamdallai: political capitals in earlier centuries, centres of eccentric Islam in later centuries. The authors of these primary sources were not, of course, modern social scientists, and they did not record much that we would like to know about the places they describe. It would, however, be hard to avoid the conclusion that the economic role of medieval Malian cities accounts [l] Ibn Batttita, op. cit. Arab. 394/Eng. 32. But fourteenth century Dya and the Dya of recent centuries may or may not have been the same city. Claude Meillassoux has argued they were not in L’itineraire d’Ibn Battuta de Walata B Malli, Journal of African History 13 (1972) 389-95, esp. 390 [2] Ba and Daget, op. cit. 129-30 [3] Gallais, op. cit. 469-70, 553-5; Marty, op. cit. 174 [4] Levtzion, op. cit. 168 [5] Ba and Daget, op. cit. 45-56, etc.; Brasseur, op. cit. 417-21

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for only a part of their relation to each other and to the countryside surrounding them. Conclusion

The urban pattern of medieval Mali was shaped by many intertwined forces. Some of these forces were economic and their effect on urbanism can be interpreted within frameworks provided by urban geography’s basic models. The central role of long-distance trade in supporting urbanism can be analysed lucidly with the aid of the concepts proposed in Vance’s mercantile model. Similarly, the evidently later and less significant role of certain Malian settlements as periodic market cenrtes can be viewed through the lens of central place theory. But the urban pattern in medieval Mali was not shaped by economic forces alone. Kingship helped create and sustain most of Mali’s early cities, while, later, many cities played other political roles. With the coming of Islam certain cities acquired status as centres of Islamic learning while others became centres of less orthodox manifestations of Islam. It is probably no accident that, while most of Mali’s pre-colonial cities, like many cities elsewhere in Black Africa, were quite ephemeral, those that survived the longest managed to become the most important links in long-distance trade. But even in these cities non-economic activities played an important part in urban functioning, as no doubt they do in all cities. A view of Malian urbanism that concentrated only on what can be analysed in terms of familiar models would be one-dimensional and inaccurate.