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WEST AFRICAN FOOD IN THE MIDDLE AGES
West African Pood in
the Middle Ages
ACCORDING TO ARABIC SOURCES
TADEUSZ LEWICKI
Professor and Director of the
Institute of Oriental Philology
University of Cracow
with the assistance of

MARION JOHNSON
Research Fellow
Centre of West African Studies
University of Birmingham
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521086738
© Cambridge University Press 1974
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1974
This digitally printed version 2008
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 72-88615

ISBN 978-0-521-08673-8 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-10202-5 paperback
CONTENTS
Foreword by J.D. Fage vii

Acknowledgements xi
Map of West and North Africa in the Middle Ages xii
Transcription and pronunciation of Arabic words xv
Introduction 1
1 Arabic sources for the history of the foodstuffs
used by West African peoples 13
2 Vegetable foodstuffs 19
The Middle Ages and subsequent changes; grain;
seeds (and roots) of various wild grasses; foods
made from cereals and from wild grasses; yams;
earth nut; leguminous plants; vegetables;
Cucurbitaceae; fruit; truffles; manna
3 Meat and fish 79
Domesticated meat animals; game; fish;
preservation of meat and fish; meat and fish dishes
4 Other foodstuffs 105
Fats; cheese; eggs; honey; sugar cane and sugar;
salt; spices; kola; beverages
5 Utensils 132
Cooking utensils; dishes and plates;
receptacles for food storage
Conclusion 134
Notes 135
Bibliography 227
General index 242
Index of authors etc.. cited
FOREWORD
No one can gainsay the importance of Arabic sources for the

history of West Africa. While the Negro peoples of other parts
of the continent were often cut off from effective contacts
with the outside world until they became caught up in the
great movement of European expansion which began in the
fifteenth century, those of West Africa — or at least of its
northern fringes — were able throughout history to maintain
contact through the pastoral peoples of the Sahara with the
civilizations of the Mediterranean. Following the Arab conquest
of North Africa in the seventh century, the trans-Saharan links
with West Africa became a subject of interest alike to the
traders and the geographers of the world civilization of Islam.
The earliest surviving Arabic reference to the West
African Bilad as-Sudan, "the land of the black man", south of
the Sahara, dates, it would seem, from the eighth 'century.
From the ninth and tenth centuries onwards, there is a
considerable corpus of Arabic geographies, histories and
travellers' accounts containing information about the Bilad
as-Sudan. This information has its limitations. The Arab world's
knowledge of West Africa was effectively limited to the savanna
lands of the Sudan that were accessible from the Sahara, and
hardly extends at all to the southerly, forested region
commonly known as G-uinea. Much of this knowledge was not first
hand. We cannot be certain that, prior to Ibn Baûta (1352-3),
any North African or Near Eastern writer ever himself visited
the lands south of the Sahara described by him. Moreover Arab
scholars were inclined to incorporate uncritically into their
own writings, and sometimes without acknowledgement, what they
had read in earlier works. Then, as Muslims, they were apt to
be cpntemptuous of pagan societies, and sometimes indeed said
little about such in the Sudan except to comment unfavourably
on what struck them as their more outrageous customs. Finally,
after about the fourteenth century, there was a general decline
in the spirit of scientific enquiry in the Muslim world.
References to West Africa in the mainstream of Arabic writing
became less frequent and less original, though to some extent
this is offset by the fact that some West Africans were now
(vii)
viii Foreword
literate in Arabic and were themselves producing chronicles and

other literature, some of which has survived.
Despite these imperfections, the fact remains that
Arabic writings constitute virtually the only written source
for the history of West Africa from the eighth century to the
fifteenth, when European mariners began to bring back accounts
of the coasts they had started to explore. Furthermore, since
Europeans hardly penetrated inland before the nineteenth century,
and did not effectively establish themselves in the western
Sudan much before the present century, Arabic documents continue
to be a prime source of information for the history of the
interior generally and for the Sudan in particular for a further
500 years.
Nevertheless, despite the great strides which have
been made during the last twenty years in the reconstruction of
West African history, these Arabic sources have been relatively
neglected compared with the sources available in European
languages or, for that matter, the evidence of archaeology or
oral tradition. There are perhaps two main reasons for this.
The first is that in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries West Africa came to be dominated by western Europeans,
and the modern historians who have explored its history, black
as well as white, have almost invariably been brought up in
European traditions of scholarship, especially in French and in
English. It is true that within, these traditions there is a
place for the study of Arabic and of the Islamic world, but
this study is both specialized and localized. It is the work,
virtually, of a lifetime to acquire a mastery of Arabic
sufficient to be able to read and to interpret medieval Arabic
manuscripts with any assurance. Relatively few scholars acquire
such mastery, and those that do have tended to concentrate
their attention on the major centres of Muslim culture in the
Near and Middle East. For obvious historical reasons, French-
based scholars have also concerned themselves with the western
Muslim lands in North Africa, but, hardly more than their
anglophone colleagues, have they extended their interests south
across the Sahara to the peripheries of the Islamic world in
West Africa.
It is thus fair to say that to date few Arabic
scholars of the first rank have become sufficiently interested
ix Foreword
in the history of West Africa and its peoples to have acquired a

competence in its study to match their competence in Arabic or
in Muslim history. Conversely —- though the situation is now
changing with the growth of universities in West Africa which
have departments of history and of Arabic — very few of those
who have first-hand knowledge of West Africa and its history
have acquired sufficient mastery of Arabic to be able to make
much use of the Arabic sources for this history. For the most
part they have had to rely on whatever may be available in
translation, usually in French or English. These translations
are haphazard, and were often made by men with little interest
in or knowledge of West Africa, and made before much significant
understanding of its history had been achieved.
Secondly, historians of West Africa who do have
Arabic, together with those who are confined to the use of
translations, have for the most part looked at the Arabic
sources from a very limited standpoint, as evidence for the
obvious themes of the expansion of Islam into West Africa and of
its interaction with the major political dominions erected by
western Sudanese peoples from the time of ancient Ghana onwards
to that of al-Hajj cUmar and Samori. Little thought has yet been
given, for example, to the use of Arabic documentation to"1 throw
light on the economic and social history of the West African
peoples.
It is against this background that an especially warm
welcome must be given to this book by Professor Tadeusz Lewicki,
with assistance in the preparation of its English edition from
Marion Johnson. Professor Lewicki is a Polish Arabist of
international fame whose work on North African history, and in
particular on its Ibadite communities, led him to make a close
study of trans-Saharan relations during the early Muslim period,
and so has brought him to a meticulous evaluation of the early
Arabic sources for the western Sudan in relation to the modern
studies which have been made of its history, archaeology,
geography and ethnography. In the present work he has chosen to
use this precious combination of talents and experience to
explore an important aspect of the social and economic history
of West Africa in the period before the opening of its maritime
contacts with the outside world. It is a commonplace that a high
proportion of the foodcrops of modern West Africa are introduc-
x Foreword
tions from tropical Asia and America, and there has been
considerable speculation as to how its peoples managed to subsist
in earlier times. Professor Lewicki shows that considerable light
can be thrown on this problem by an intelligent exploration of
the Arabic sources. This then is a pioneer work, and one which it
is to be hoped will stimulate many further explorations in the
economic and social fields of the Arabic sources for West African
history.
NOTE
See, for example, the following works by Professor Lewicki:
"Une chroniques ibaglite TKitab as-Siyar1", Revue des Etudes
Islamiques, I (1934); "Quelques textes inedits en vieux berbere
provenant d'une chronique ibadite anonyme", ibid., III (1934);
"Melanges berberes-ibadites", ibid., III, (1936); "Notice sur la
chronique ibadite dfad-DargTnT", Rocznik Orientalistyczny, 11
Etudes ibaflites nord-africaines (Warsaw, 1955); "La repartition
geographique des groupements ibaîtes dans lfAfrique du Nord au
Moyen Age", Roc. Or., 21 (1957); "A propos d!une liste de tribus
berberes dflbn Hawkal", Folio Orientalia, I (1959); Les
Ibaflites en Tunisie au moyen age, Accademia Polacca di Scienze
e Lettere (Rome), Conferenze Fasc. 6 (1959); "Quelques extraits
inedits relatifs aux voyages des commercants et des
missionaires ibaijites", Fol. Or. , II (1960); "Les historiens,
biographes et traditionnalistes ibiujites", Fol. Or., III (1961);
"LTetat nord-africain de Tahert et ses relations avec le Soudan
occidental", Cahiers detudes Africaines, VIII (1962); "Traits
dfhistoire du commerce transsaharien", Etnograia Polska, VIII
(1964); "The Ibaijites in Arabia and Africa", Journal of World
History, XIII, 1 (1971).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my profound gratitude to Professor

J. D. Page, whose initiative and help have made the publication
of this book possible. This is an English version of a work
first published in Polish in 1963. Since then I have become
better acquainted with West Africa; my further reading and my
modest travels in Senegal and Mauritania in the years 1967 and
1968 have added much new material. For this I am greatly indebted
to Professor Vincent Monteil, then Director of the Institut
Pondamental d'Afrique Noire of Dakar, a generous grant from
which made my travels in West Africa possible.
Among those to whom I am particularly grateful are my
Senegambian and Mauritanian informants: Professor Amar Samb, the
present Director of IFAN, Professor Sekene Mody Cissoko of the
University of Dakar, M. Abdoulaye Bathily, formerly of IFAN, and
the venerable Shaykh Mukhtarun Oild Hamidun of Nouakchott.
I am also greatly indebted to Mrs Marion Johnson for
her assistance in the preparation of the present English
edition of my book and for her help in correcting this, and also
to Mme Marianne Abrahamowicz, who made the draft translation
from the Polish text.
T. Lewicki
Cracow, Poland
(xi)
[20°W |to°w
HE.
'(MADEIRA)
20
(BE*- TADMEKKA AIR

TAKADDA
KUBAJU
ll (C0B1JL)
HAUSA
td
IO°W
Map of West and North Africa in the Middle Ages:

modern names appear in parentheses.
|2O'E |3O°E
Nafusa _ _ _
( T R I P O L I T A N I A T ^ 7 (CYRENAtCA)
•Waddan •Augila.
(Sokna)
(EGYPT)
*2awTla
(ZuUa)
20
KAWAR^ (TlBESTp
A(BUma) (BORICU)
(ENNED1) NUBIA
2AGHAWA
(DARFUR)
BORNU
GAOGA
A Au/5 Saline
— •- — — Approximate southern limit of desert
: : : : : : :
: : : : : : Forest
0 200 400 600 $00 1000 Km
Q
11O E \2O°E |3O°E
TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION OF ARABIC WORDS
CONSONANTS
c
a guttural sound
b as English b
d as English d
<J a hard, emphatic (palatal) d
dh as th in English "this"
f as English f
gh a guttural sound, something between gh and r
h as in English "hay", "he"
h a strong guttural aspirate
j as in English "John"
k as English k
kh a strong guttural, as ch in Scottish "loch"
1 as English 1
m as English m
n as English n
q. as ck in English "stuck", pronounced very gutturally
r as r in Italian "Pirenze"
s as English s
s a hard, emphatic s
sh as English sh
t as English t
t a hard, emphatic (palatal) t
th as th in English "throne"
w as w in English "wand", "wax"
y as y in English "yard"
z as English z
z a hard, emphatic z
VOWELS DIPHTHONGS
a as a in Italian "donna" au as ou in English "out
i as i in Italian "tutti" ay as i in English "idea
u as u in Italian "frutti"
a long a
I long i
u long u
(xv)
INTRODUCTION
The period covered by this book is often referred to by

historians of sub-Saharan Africa as "the Middle Ages", though
this expression is not always relevant to African history.
This is the period between the conquest of Egypt and North
Africa by the Muslim Arabs and the great geographical
discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Research
on the history of Africa south of the Sahara during this period
has so far been confined mainly to archaeology, historical
geography and political history; many other subjects, and
particularly economic history, have been neglected, and
research has gone no further than the noting of the most
important facts found in archaeological and written sources.
One of the chief reasons for the delay in investigating the
economic history of sub-Saharan Africa in the period between
the seventh and the sixteenth centuries (and this also applies
to other branches of history) is the absence of a critical
edition, with commentary and translation into a modern
European language, of the written sources in various languages.
Such a Corpus scriptorum antiquam historiam Africae
subsaharaneae illustrantium, with translations in a language
understandable to scholars inside and outside Africa (probably
English or French), is essential for research on the history
of Africa from the seventh to the sixteenth century.
Admittedly the situation is much better than it was
even a few decades ago. We have now modern critical editions of
a number of European sources.from the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries which are very important for the history of sub-
Saharan Africa and also a collection of Arabic sources, though
these have not been edited so as to be of maximum value for
non-Arabists. These Arabic sources are particularly important
for the history of Africa before the sixteenth century; the
absence of up-to-date critical editions and translations makes
it necessary to call in the help of Arabists, who will clearly
have to face a number of problems when, working on the history
Âsterisks in the text, together with Arabic
figures in the left-hand margins, indicate a
note in the endnotes. section (pp. 135-226).
2 West African food in the Middle Ages
of sub-Saharan Africa. Just as an Africanist who does not know

Arabic cannot always see the real meaning of the Arabic text in
a European translation, Arabists can also make-mistakes if they
do not fully understand the problems of African history. But
this does not exempt them, particularly those who are familiar
with the historical problems of North Africa, from the duty of
carrying out research based on the Arabic sources for the
history of Negro Africa, Even before the cooperation of various
specialists is achieved in the production of a collection such
as our proposed Corpus. Arabists must engage as often as possible
in research into the earlier history of Africa. Arabic sources,
which are almost the only written sources for the history of
Africa up to the middle of the fifteenth century, have often
been under-estimated by Africanists, who, though they have used
them repeatedly in their own work, often fail to understand
their peculiar character.
This is particularly true of West Africa, the northern
part of which was repeatedly penetrated during our period by
Arab travellers and merchants, and for which there is consequently
much more information in Arabic sources than for other parts of
sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the facts in these sources have been
used by Arabists and others in studies of the earlier history of
North Africa; less attention has been paid to the information in
these sources about the economic history of West Africa before
the sixteenth century. This has encouraged me to present an
English version of an account, first published in Polish in 1963,
of the foods of the peoples of West Africa between the tenth and
•x-
the sixteenth centuries, as revealed in Arabic sources.
Since I am only an Arabist, not an Africanist in the
strict meaning of the word, I have limited my investigation to
the use of a single category of written sources, though I fully
realize the drawbacks of this method. With a few exceptions I
have omitted the information to be found in fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century European sources. On the other hand, I have
made some use of the accounts of European travellers from the
second half of the eighteenth century up to the beginning of
the colonial period, since these are even more helpful in
understanding the Arabic sources than the works of recent
ethnographers, though these have also been used in the present
study.
3 Introduction
The period covered by this book begins with the tenth

century — the date of the first information by Arabic writers
on the food of the people of West Africa. It ends in the early
sixteenth century with the Description of Africa (completed in
1526) by Leo Africanus, the last original author of Arab origin
to write about our area, though he wrote in Italian, not in
Arabic; his description is based on his own observations made
during two journeys to West Africa (in 1511. and 1512), and on
information collected during these travels.
His book, which we have taken as the end of our period,
contains the last extensive description of West Africa during
the time when it was almost completely isolated from the rest
of the world apart from North Africa and, to a lesser extent,
from the Nile valley. The next few decades witnessed the
beginning of lively economic intercourse between West Africa
and the countries of South-east Asia and the newly-discovered
continent of America. One result of this was the appearance in
West Africa of new edible plants, mainly of American origin,
but including also coconut and other plants from Asia. Since
the beginning of the sixteenth century, these new foods have to
a considerable extent displaced the traditional local vegetable
foodstuffs, and also the social and religious customs an?l
beliefs associated with them.
The important information to be found in the writings
of the medieval Arabic authors about the foods of the peoples
of West Africa during our period has hitherto been used in only
a fragmentary way by historians. Indeed, apart from the work
of ethno-botanists, it is only very recently that there has
been any attempt to investigate the foods and methods of food
preparation used by the West African peoples either in the past
or at the present day.
The geographical scope of the present book is limited
to West Africa. By this term, in keeping with recent usage, I
mean that part of the African continent inhabited by Negro
peoples which is bounded on the south and west by the Atlantic
Ocean, on the north by the Sahara, and on the east by the
eastern frontier of Nigeria. The boundaries of West Africa so
delimited are of a somewhat conventional character. This applies
particularly to the northern boundary, which is not a distinct
geographical barrier; the transition from desert areas to areas
occupied "by permanent settled populations is gradual, and even

the desert itself is not completely uninhabited. Nor is the
Sahara an ethnic boundary between the white peoples and the
Negroes, since within its southern part there are still some
remnants of the Negro population whom we shall call Sudanic.
Negro territory once extended much further to the north, par-
ticularly in southern Mauritania, in the area to the north of
the middle Niger, and in the country of Air. On the other hand,
white peoples are found both on the Senegal and on the Niger
and in the country east of the Niger. These are Tuareg tribes,
descendants of the former Berber nomads who came there from the
north — from southern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and
Tripolitania. Having settled in the northern Sudan, these
tribes frequently intermingled with the local Negro population
and sometimes played a part in the history of the countries.
It is also hard to justify our eastern boundary of
West Africa solely in geographical or ethnic terms. There is, in
fact, no clear-cut geographical barrier separating Nigeria and
the basin of Lake Chad from the countries on the Nile, and it is
hard to detect any significant ethnic boundary. The eastern
limit of West Africa is thus of a purely conventional character.
The vagueness of our northern and eastern boundaries
has an obvious bearing on the geographical scope of this work.
To throw more light on our subject, we must use not only
information relating to the countries of the lower and middle
Senegal, the middle Niger and eastwards to Lake Chad, but also
references to the peoples of the southern Sahara and to peoples
living north and east of Lake Chad.
On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the
whole southern part of West Africa, and the tropical forest
area in particular, was completely unknown to the Arabs of the
Middle Ages. These countries were not normally reached by Arab
merchants or travellers; that is why there is almost no mention
of them in the Arabic sources earlier than the sixteenth
century. It is only through works written in the western Sudan
in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we can
look, even superficially, into the ethnic relationships and
the history of these southern areas. There is very little
information about the food of the peoples of the southern
parts of West Africa. In some cases, however, the population
5 Introduction
was related to the peoples of the northern zone; this was true,
for instance, for the southern part of the Mande group or
Mandingoes (unknown to medieval Arabs) who are closely related
in culture, and particularly in their use of foodstuffs, to the
northern Mande peoples. Thus we may assume that information in
the medieval Arabic sources referring to the population settled
on the middle Niger is also of value for peoples living in the
basin of the upper Niger, Moreover, it seems that the peoples of
the southern part of West Africa, particularly those living to
the north of the tropical forest, though ethnically distinct
from the peoples of the northern part, had a similar culture and
economy, and ate the same foods that the Sudanic peoples were
recorded as eating by the medieval Arabic authors. The peoples
of these more isolated parts of the West African interior often
succeeded in retaining their ancient customs, including tradi-
tional foodstuffs and cookery, right up to the nineteenth
century and beyond, while in the more accessible coastal regions
and on the southern borders of the Sahara the food of the people
had been radically altered; the reasons for this are economic —
the adoption of new cultivated plants — and religious — the
suppression of alcoholic drinks under pressure of the rapid
spread of Islam.
West Africa is by no means uniform in climate or
vegetation. In the north is the desert zone, devoid of'water
and almost completely without plants; there is virtually no
arable land and even pastoralism is extremely difficult, so
that the population is sparse and mainly nomadic. In complete
contrast, the southernmost zone has very heavy rainfall, and
supports the rich vegetation of the tropical forest; the land
can be cultivated practically everywhere, and the population is
comparatively dense. Between these two extremes lie intermediate
zones. The desert gradually gives way to thorn scrub on the
south, and the thorn scrub merges into grassland with occasional
trees. Further south, the grass grows gradually richer and the
trees taller until finally the forest is reached. The country is
generally flat, the monotony interrupted by the Jos plateau to
the east and the Puta Jallon plateau merging into the Nimba
Mountains in the far west, in the Republic of G-uinee. In. this
area rise the three largest rivers of West Africa: the Niger,
the Senegal and the Gambia, all three serving as important
arteries of communication.
The interior of West Africa is not easily accessible.
Only from the east, from the banks of the upper Nile, is pen-
etration facilitated by the absence of any geographical barrier.
Along this route, along the southern margins of the Sahara,
8 influences penetrated from Nubia; trade from Egypt had earlier
passed this way, and also along the partly desert route which
connected Egypt with the area of the historic state of G-ha'na, a
9 route known and used by the beginning of the tenth century A.D.
The tropical forests made penetration of the interior difficult
from the south, though by the early sixteenth century it was
possible to transport kola nuts, an important product of the
10 countries on the Gulf of Guinea, through the forest. Prom the
coasts of Mauritania and Senegal on the west, foreign influences
penetrated only very occasionally before the middle of the
fifteenth century. Incidents like HannoTs expedition in the
fifth century B.C., undertaken to found Carthaginian trading-
posts on the west coasts of Africa, or the journey of the Arab
Ibn Fatima (? twelfth century) who came into the western Sudan
by way of the inhospitable coastlands of the Atlantic Ocean,
were rare and can hardly have exerted any major influence.
Foreign influences penetrated West Africa from the
west at a comparatively late date, and began with the founda-
tion in 1448 of a Portuguese post on Arguin Island off the
Mauritanian coast south of Cape Blanco. This was a trading post
to which local products were brought in large quantities,
including gold and slaves, which were exchanged for European
goods, or, more accurately, goods such as the spices, mainly
from South-east Asia — saffron, cloves, pepper and ginger —
for which Europeans acted as commercial middlemen. We owe this
information to Valentim Pernandes, whose account of the West
African coast was written in 1506-7, after the discovery of the
sea route to India by Yasco da Gama in 1498. It was this
discovery which probably began the economic exchange between
East Africa, India and the other countries of South-east Asia
on the one hand, and the Portuguese post of Arguin on the
11 other.
On the northern borders of West Africa, which are
also the southern borders of the Sahara, the situation was
different. The desert was less inhospitable and more densely
7 Introduction
peopled in the past, and during the Middle Ages — and probably
also in ancient times — it was crossed by numerous paths runn-
ing roughly north and south along which nomadic Berber peoples
penetrated from the north, and many Sudanic groups from the
south. These peoples were seeking edible wild plants, game,
pasture, or land suitable for cultivation. Following them, and
benefiting from their knowledge of the country, came expeditions
of various kinds, even in very early times; such expeditions
usually started from the North African countries with towns on
the Mediterranean coast, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine
and finally Arab. Their purposes varied; some were undertaken to
12 capture Negro slaves, or to gain control of the various salt-
mines scattered in the desert; some were merchant caravans in
search of the gold of the Sudan, then profitably exchanged in
West Africa for Saharan salt and glass beads. The introduction
into North Africa (about A.D. 300?) of the camel, that most use-
ful of animals in the desert, made travel along these routes
considerably easier. The breeding of camels, undertaken on a
large scale in the southern parts of present-day Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania as early as the fourth century,
facilitated southward expeditions of large groups of Berbers
looking for fodder for their herds, or fleeing from Roman,
Byzantine or Arab rule; also, very importantly, it facilitated
13 caravan commerce with the countries south of the Sahara.
When the first Arab conquerors reached the borderlands
of the Sahara, some of the local Berbers for various reasons
favoured the conquerors; some of these also knew the caravan
paths which crossed the Sahara, and these Berbers became the
first guides of the Arabs in their penetration towards West
Africa — a penetration which was at first mainly military in
14 character, but soon became commercial.. In this way the first
commercial and cultural ties were formed between the North
African Muslim Arabs and the western and central Sudan; at the
beginning of the period of Arab rule in the Maghrib, the most
important part was played noi; by the new conquerors, but by the
gradually Islamizing and Arabizing Berbers. The truth of this is
confirmed by the part played in the early Middle Ages by
Sijilmasa in south-eastern Morocco, Tahert and Wargla in the
Algerian Sahara, the oases of southern Tunisia and Jabal Nafusa
in northern Tripolitania, all Muslim, but essentially Berber,
8 West African, food in the Middle Ages
15 centres.
The information concerning countries and peoples of
the western Sudan which began to reach centres of Arabic
scholarship from the seventh and eighth centuries thus comes
only in part from Arab warriors or merchants; most of this
information was given to the Arab geographers by Berbers who
had long been, in close touch with Negroland, and who knew what
was going on there. This is what makes the information so
valuable. It is only at a later date, from the second half of
the tenth century, that genuinely Arab travellers and geog-
raphers appear on the scene; it is their descriptions of the
Sudan which provide the principal sources for the questions
dealt with in this work.
The ethnic and political situation in West Africa, as
seen by Arab travellers, geographers and historians between the
late eighth century and the early sixteenth century has often
been studied and examined. In this limited space, I will not
deal with this in detail, but will concentrate on the most
essential points.
In the extreme west of the Sudan, long before the
first Arabic references to this country, lived the Sudanic
peoples known, as Tukolor (Tucuroes according to the early
Portuguese travellers), Serer and Wolof. In about A.D. 1000 the
first of these, known to medieval writers as Takrur (Tekrur),
founded a state on both sides of the lower and middle Senegal,
with a capital also known as Takrur in the neighbourhood of the
modern town of Podor. This state was converted to Islam at an
early date; and by the first half of the eleventh century A.D.,
Islam had also become the ruling religion in the state of Silla
(subordinate to Takrur), with a capital of the same name, on the
middle Senegal between Takrur and the town of Ghana. A rather
earlier organized state in this area was the kingdom of Waram,
attested at the end of the eighth century by the geographer
al-FazarT. Some inveetigators place this in the part of Senegal
which was later to be taken over by the Wolof state.
The country east of the upper Senegal to the upper
Niger and the adjacent lake district to the west was a region
occupied from the earliest times by the Mandingoes. In about
the third or fourth century A.D. the northern peoples of that
group, including the Soninke, founded the kingdom of Ghana, the
9 Introduction
earliest of the known states of the western Sudan. The earliest

political centre of this kingdom lay in the land of Aukar,
north-west of the oasis of Walata, colonized by the Soninke even
before 200 B.C. In historical times, the capital of the state of
Ghana was the town of Ghana, now the ruins known as Koumbi Saleh
in Mauritania. In the eleventh century the capital included a
large Muslim quarter inhabited by North African merchants, with
17 twelve mosques, though the local population was still pagan.
Al-Fazari gives the dimensions of the kingdom, which at that
time was undoubt-edly the largest political unit in West Africa.
The whole of the western Sudan was subordinated to it, including
the gold-bearing areas in the basin of the upper Senegal known as
Bilad at-Tibr, "the land of gold-dust", a country which later
Arab geographers were to call Wanqara or Wangara, and which was
18 also inhabited by Mandingo peoples. According to a later legend,
the first rulers of the state of Ghana were immigrants from the
north arriving in the fourth century A.D. , of Berber or perhaps
Jewish origin; in about 770 they were replaced by rulers from
the Soninke.
The kingdom of Ghana, whose inhabitants were partly
Muslim as early as the eleventh century, had begun to decline
from about 1076, after being attacked by Berber tribes from
neighbouring Mauritania. These same tribes were later to lay the
foundations of the great state of the Almoravids, which also
took in Morocco and Spain. The gradual decline of the kingdom of
Ghana continued until the early thirteenth century, when the
paramountcy of the western Sudan was taken over by the rulers of
19 another people of the Mande groupe, the Malinke (Malinke).
These people founded a great state, the centre of which near the
town of Jeriba was already known in the ninth century as Mallei
(Mallil). This is stated by the Arab geographer al-YacqubT (late
20 ninth century) and also by al-BakrT (1068), who tells us that
the king of Mallei had been converted to the Muslim faith some
21,22 time before he wrote. The later Arabic name was Mall. The
capital of this state was first at Jeriba on the Niger, and
later at the town of Niani (Nyani, Nyeni), some distance lower
23 down the Niger, and known also as Mali". According to the Arab
geographers, the town developed into an important centre of
trade with North Africa, and, as in the town of Ghana, a large
quarter grew up inhabited by white Berber and Arab merchants,
24 immigrants from North Africa. There is no doubt that the towns

of Ghana, Mali and other urban centres of the western Sudan with
North African immigrants among their populations played an
important part in spreading the cultivation of some edible
plants which were characteristic of North Africa rather than of
the Sudan.
The state of Mali went into decline in the fifteenth
century. Most of the provinces which had belonged to it when it
was flourishing in the fourteenth century went over to the
neighbouring state of the Songhai, and the power of the kings
of MalT was limited to the region of Jeriba, which had been the
25 cradle of the state.
The state of Ghana included the small state of Sama
or Samaqanda, reported first by al-YacqubT and then by al-BakrT,
who places it four days1 journey from Ghana in the direction of
the town of Ghayaro (Gadiaro) on the upper Senegal. In the same
country, two days from Samaqanda, was the town of Taqa.
North of the states of Takrur and Ghana (and, later,
MalT) lay areas inhabited by various Berber peoples. Some of
these formed the federation reported as early as the eighth
century 'by al-FazarT, and later by al-YacqubT, under the name
of Anbiya; the whole of the "western Sahara was under its rule.
In all probability, these peoples were the Sanhaja (Zanaga) —
the Lamtuna (Lemtuna), Juddala (Joddala, Jedala, Guedala) and
other Berber tribes which were later to play an extremely
important part in the creation of the Almoravid state. Even at
this early date, an important political and commercial centre
of this region seems to have been the town of Audaghast or
Awdaghast, on the Rkis plateau in southern Mauritania north-
east of Kiffa. It is mentioned as a kingdom (called Ghast) by
al-YacqubT, who adds that it was inhabited by a heathen tribe
at war with the numerous kingdoms of Negroland. Further east to
the north of the Niger bend, another tribe of the Sanhaja group,
the Berber Maddasa people, were living in the eleventh century;
this same tribe in the ninth century had been living in south-
eastern Morocco.
East of the area occupied by the state of Ghana, and
later by the state of MalT, the agricultural and fishing people
of the Songhai lived in the Dendi area. According to historians
of Africa who have drawn on rather late sources and on local
11 Introduction
legend, in about the middle of the seventh century these people

founded a state with its capital at Kukiya on the island of
Bentia, over a hundred kilometres downstream of the present-day
town of Gao, the Kaukau or Jaujau of the Arab geographers which
was the later capital of the kingdom. This state also had been
converted to the Muslim faith, at least formally, at a relatively
early date (by the eleventh century) and had entered into commer-
cial relations with Ghana as well as with the important commercial
26 centres of southern Tunisia and Egypt. An intermediary in its
relations with North Africa was the town of Tadmekka (also known
as Tadmekket), north-east of Gao, the ruins of which are now
known as es-Suq. This is first heard of at the end of the ninth
century; by the tenth century it was already the capital of a
separate Berber state, which continued right up to the fourteenth
27 century. During the first half of the fourteenth century, the
state of the Songhai, or Gao, fell into the hands of the kings
of MalT. However, by the middle of the fifteenth century its
importance began to increase steadily and under King Askia
Muhammed (1493-1528) it was able to bring under its rule the
adjacent areas inhabited by Mandingoes, Fulani, Hausa and
Tuareg. As a result of its conquests, the kingdom of Songhai
included the Hausa provinces in the east, its northern borders
reached Taghaza, and its western borders reached Takrur. South
of the Niger bend in the basin of the upper Volta the Mossi
kingdoms were developing during the Middle Ages; later sources
record them as the chief adversaries of the Songhai Empire, but
there is no mention of them in the medieval Arabic sources.
In the areas east and north-east of Gao, in addition
to Tadmekka there were other Berber states during the fourteenth
28 to sixteenth centuries, including Takadda and Air, which was
29 known already to Al-BakrT. The peoples of these states, of the
Lamta (Lemta) tribe among others, were ancestors of some of the
present-day Tuareg tribes.
South of these small states were the Hausa, a people
30 known to al-YacqubT in the late ninth century as the âusin.
Gobir, one of the small states formed by the Hausa, is recorded
under the name of Kubar (pronounced Gobir) by Ibn Battuta who
visited the western Sudan in 1352-3. The other Hausa states
(Kano, Zaria, Katsina) do not appear in the sources until the
Description of Africa by Leo Africanus (1526). Ibn Battuta also
records having heard of the state of YufT(mis-spelt for the

inferred form Nufi) on the lower Niger, the present-day Nupe,
and also the land of MulT (Muri on the left bank of the Niger
near the town of Niamey) which in the fourteenth century was on
the borders of the lands ruled by the king of Mali.
In the Lake Chad area, the state of Kanem was develop-
ing. It had existed as early as the ninth century encompassing
areas to the north of the lake. After a time it united with
Bornu, to the south-west of the lake, which in the course of time
came to play an important part in the association. Kanem-Bornu
gradually increased in importance; in the fourteenth century,
the kings of the combined state extended their power to the
Kawar chain of oases connecting Kanem with the Fezzan, and even
31 conquered the Fezzan itself.
In the tenth century, Kanem was dependent on the state
of the Zaghawa; this state took its name from a people akin to
the Teda, the ZaghaVa tribe who at this period occupied areas
32 from Kawar in the west to Nubia in the east. The centre of the
state of the Zaghawa, which the Arab geographer al-MuhallabT
describes as larger than the state of Kaukau (the. Songhai state),
was apparently present-day Wadai. It also seems that from the
tenth to the twelfth centuries, the Zaghawa tribe wasêxtending
its influence south-westwards towards the Niger bend. By the
thirteenth century, however, according to Ibn Sac!d, the Zaghawa
33 had already become subordinate to the king of Kanem.
This, in very brief outline, is a summary of the ethnic

and political relations of West Africa — or that part of it
known to Arab geographers, travellers and historians — from the
34 late eighth century to the early sixteenth century.
13
1: ARABIC SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE FOODSTUFFS

USED BY WEST AFRICAN PEOPLES
Let us go on now to a "brief review of the Arabic sources contain-

ing information about the food used by the peoples of West Africa,
or at least of its northern part, called by the medieval Arabic
writers "Bilad as-Sudan", i.e. Negroland.
The first Arabic author who gives any information on
the food of the population of the western Sudan, and particularly
of the state of Ghana, is the Arab geographer Ibn al-FaqTh
al-HamadhariT, who wrote in about A.D. 903. His written account,
which is known as Kitab al-Buldan, is to a large extent based on
earlier Arabic geographical studies, such as the now-missing
work called Kitab al-Masalik wa ^1-mamalik, by the Persian-
Arabic geographer Ibn Khordadhbeh (Ibn Khurradadhbeh) (first
version £. 846, second £. 885). Thus it is possible that the
information on the Sudan given by Ibn al-FaqTh may come, not
from the early tenth century, but from the middle of the ninth.
But it is also possible that Ibn al-FaqTh may have had other,
oral, information on Negroland, of which he made use in his
work.
Of lesser importance for the question at issue are
the references contained in Kitab al-Masalik, a work by the
geographer al-IstakhrT, a representative of the classical school
of Arabic geographers of the tenth century. The first version of
this work must be dated before 933, while the second, more
comprehensive version was finished in 951. It seems that the
information about Africa given by al-IstakhrT was collected
early in the tenth century, or possibly in the late ninth
century.
Al-IsâkhrT's work is continued by another geographer
of the classical school: Ibn Hauqal, an Arab from northern
Mesopotamia. In the capacity of merchant (or, possibly, also of
political agent), Ibn Hauqal visited a number of western lands
including North Africa, where he stayed for many years, and the
western Sudan, which he appears to have visited in about the
middle of the tenth century. The information collected during
his travels is included in his work, the Kitab al-Masalik wa
3
l-mamalik or Kitab §urat al-ard, most of which is based on
al-IsâkhrT' s work. There are two or possibly three versions of
Ibn Hauqal's work, the oldest dating from 967, the latest from
3 977.*
Of great importance for the question of the foods of
the West African peoples is the now-missing work by al-MuhallabT
bearing the title (in common with most of the older Arabic
geographical treatises) Kitab al-Masaiik wa 3l-mamalik. This work
is better known as Kitab al-cAzTzT, from the name of al-cAzTz,
ruler of the Patimid dynasty in Egypt (who reigned between 975
and 996), for whom it was written by al-MuhallabT. Many parts of
this missing work have been preserved because it served as the
main 'source for entries on the geography of the Sudan in the
geographical dictionary compiled by Yaqut (early thirteenth
century) who quotes it over sixty times. Extracts from Kitab
al-c>AzTzT were also used in the first half of the fourteenth
century by Abu 31-Fida ; unfortunately these include few ref-
4 erences to the Sudan.
A still more important source for the question we are
concerned with is the geographical treatise by al-BakrTt an
Arab author who wrote in Muslim Spain. The work, called again
Kitab al-Masalik wa 3l-mamalik, finished in 1068, has not been
preserved intact. Nevertheless the extant manuscripts contain a
description of the Sudanic lands, though not one founded on the
writer's personal observation. Al-BakrT never travelled to the
Sudan, but he makes use of a number of official reports on the
area, and of accounts kept in the Spanish archives. These
reports date from various periods, the latest from about 1058.
It seems that some of the material relating to the Sudan and
western Africa was taken by al-Bakr! from another missing
geographical account of the Maghrib, by Muhammad ibn Yusuf
5 ibn. al-Warraq (died A.D. 973-4).*
Some information on the food of the inhabitants of
West Africa is to be found also in Kitab al-Jaghrafiya by an
Arabic geographer of unknown origin, az-ZuhrT, who in about
A.D. 1137 lived in Granada, in Muslim Spain. The last date
mentioned in this work is the year 545 A.H., i.e. A.D. 1150-1;
6 in all probability the work was completed shortly after this.
Kitab al-Jaghrafiya was until recently available only in man-
7 uscript, apart from a few extracts, mainly about Africa and
8 Spain, published by Youssouf Kamal (1934) and Basset.
Some information on the food used by the early
15 1: Arabic sources
inhabitants of West Africa comes from al-IdrTsT, the author of

the very famous geographical work, the Kitab Nuzhat al-mushtaq
fi 3khtiraq al-afaq (1154). It is also known as Kitab Ruj.jar
(Roger's Book), after the Sicilian ruler Roger II, at whose
court in Palermo, and with whose considerable support, al-IdrTsT
collected materials for the work itself, and also for the atlas
that accompanied it. In his description, al-IdrTsT relies mainly
upon the accounts of Arab and non-Arab merchants and travellers,
having recourse to the older written sources (of which he men-
tions a fair number) only where he can not find current inform-
ation about the areas described. The passages describing the
Sudan and the Sahara are, with a few exceptions, based on reports
9 from the author's own time.
We have already mentioned the work of the Arab geog-
rapher Yaqut (died A.D. 1229) whose field of activity covered
Central Asia, Iran and Syria. His work, called Muc.jam al-buldant
is a kind of geographical dictionary. In the entries concerning
the lands and peoples of the Sudan the author relies mainly on
al-MuhallabT, but he avails himself also of other older Arabic
_ _ _ *
10 written sources, including the work of Ibn al-Faqih al Hamadhani.
In the second half of the thirteenth century, a
geographical work called Kitab Jaghrafiya fT aqalim as-sabca
was written by Ibn SacTd, an Arab from the neighbourhood of
Granada who died either at Damascus in 1274, or at Tunis in
1286. This work is known from summaries or resumes, and partic-
ularly from the extensive excerpts included in the geographical
treatise of Abu ^l-Fida3. A long account of the Sudan from
Ibn SacTd's geography has also been published in a French
translation by Reinaud and an Arabic edition has recently been
published. The principal source used by Ibn SacTd for the
geography of the Sudan is the now-missing account of travels by
Ibn Patima (twelfth century), who visited West Africa from the
11 coast of Mauritania all the way to Kanem and Bornu.
Contemporary with Ibn SacTd, in the Arab east the
geographer and cosmqgrapher al-QazwTnT was also active. In 1275
he wrote a geographical treatise, the Athar al-billtd, in which
he gives some original information on the Sudan derived from
various sources including two travellers in the Sudan,
al-Janahanl (?) and al-MilyanT (mis-spelt as al-MultanT), who
apparently visited the country in the thirteenth century, though
12 no details are known about them.

Some information on West Africa including references to
the food of the local tribes is given by the Syrian author Shams
ad-Din ad-DimashqT (died A.D. 1327), in his cosmography Nukhbat
ad-dakhr fi ca.ja 3ib al-barr wa *l-bahr. But his information is
hardly original, bearing the strong stamp a£ al-BakrTfs
13 influence. Among the sources used by ad-DimashqT, mention
should be made of a work by al-Wa-fcwat (died A.D. 1318), in which
14 there is also some information on the Sudan.
Of great importance for the question under discussion
is the geographical treatise TaqwTm al-buldan, by the famous
Arabic- historian and geographer of Syrian origin, Abu 31-Pida°.
This work, completed in 1321, gives much valuable information
about Negroland; it was based mainly on the geography of Ibn
SacTd, and to a much smaller extent on a now-missing work by
15 al-Muhallab!.*
Among the basic sources relating to the food used by
the tribes living in West Africa is the geographical treatise
Masalik al-absar, by al-cOmarT, an Arabic author who lived and
wrote in Egypt (1301-49). The author, noted for his learning and
for his scientific precision, though he himself did not visit
the Sudan, makes use of a number of contemporary accounts, most
of them oral; these he sometimes cites in the original version,
from time to time drawing attention to their mutual contradictions.
Among those who told him about the land of Mall, on which he has
a .great deal of information, was ad-DukkalT, a Moroccan who had
lived in the capital of MalT for thirty-five years, and had come
to know the whole country well. Some of al-c0marTfs information
comes from the Spanish Arab, Abu cAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Raghano,
who visited various countries including Mauritania in the early
fourteenth century, or perhaps the late thirteenth century; and
some of his information comes, indirectly, from Mansa Musa, king
of the MalT empire, who spent some time in Cairo during a pil-
16 grimage to Mecca in 1325. As regards the description of the
Sudan, al-c0marT's work served as a foundation for the work of
al-Qal ashandT, an Arabic encyclopaedist who lived and wrote in
Egypt- He is the author of §ubh al-acsha, which he wrote in
17 1412.*
Another work of equal importance for our purpose is
that of Lbn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar of presumably Berber
17 1: Arabic sources
origin who included the Sudan (1352-3) in his numerous travels

in Asia, Europe and Africa. His route was from Sijilmasa in
south-east Morocco past the salt deposits of Taghaza, the oasis
of Walata, the town of MalT (Niani), Timbuctu, Gao, Takedda, Air,
Hoggar (Ahaggar) and the oasis of Tuat. After returning from this
roundabout journey to Sijilmasa, he went to Fez, the Moroccan
capital. Ibn Battuta's account, of his journeys was written down
in 1355 from his dictation "by Ibn Juzayy, who completed the work
in 1356; it is called Tu&fat an-nuzzar. Ibn Baûta gives much
interesting information on the Sudan and its inhabitants as well
as on their food, a testimony to his excellent powers of
18 observation and high reliability.
The last author whose information on the food of West
African peoples has been used in this study is Leo (or rather,
Johannes Leo) Africanus, the outstanding Arab geographer of "the
first half of the sixteenth century, who wrote in Italian. He
was a Moroccan by birth, of a Spanish-Arab family from Granada,
who after 1492 settled at Fez, the capital of Morocco. His
Arabic name was al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan az-ZayyatT. In
his early youth he went on a journey to the Arab east and to
Constantinople; in 1511, when hardly seventeen years old, he
went to Timbuctu to the court of the king of the Songhai^ state,
Askia Muhammed, accompanying his uncle, sent there by the
Moroccan ruler on an important diplomatic mission. After his
return to Morocco, Leo lived there for a time; then, according
19 to his own statement, he went on. another journey to the Sudan
20 in 1512, going from the western Sahara and Timbuctu, through
21,22,23 Bornu* and Gaoga (Wadai)* to Egypt.* In 1518 he was taken
prisoner near the Tunisian coast by Sicilian corsairs, and so
came to Rome, where he found a protector in the person of Pope
Leo X, a great lover of science. In 1520 al-Hasan was baptised
and given the Christian name of Leo with the nickname "Africanus".
Luckily Leo Africanus had with him, at the time of his capture,
the records of his travels in North Africa and the Sudan; these
later served as the basis for his very extensive and interesting
treatise on the geography of Africa, written in Italian and
called Description of Africa. According to Leo himself this was
completed in 1526. The first edition appeared in 1550 and was
followed within six years by translations into Latin and French.
The French translation served as the basis for Scheferfs edition,
published in Paris in 1896-8. In 1931 the MS of another version

of the Description of Africa was discovered, more complete than
the one which had served as the basis for the Italian edition of
1550 and for the Latin and French translations of 1556. An
edition of the text of this more extensive version is now being
prepared. There is a French translation, published by Epaulard
in 1956.
Leo Africanus's work is of outstanding value, not
only because of the abundant material it contains, but also
because the author wrote it from records (in Arabic) which, as
24 he says himself, he made daily, writing down his .own observa-
tions as well as accounts given him by trustworthy people. His
transcriptions of the Arabic names of Sudanic countries, towns
and peoples, and also of Sudanic words, sometimes occasion
uncertainties, but this is natural enough if we bear in mind
the long period of time which had elapsed between the time the
travel diary was written (1511-12) and the time when the com-
pleted work was produced (1526). This sometimes leads to diff-
25 iculties in the identification of names.
The Arabic sources listed are of very unequal value.
Alongside extensive reports describing in great detail various
foods used by the inhabitants of West Africa in the Middle Ages,
or informing us on the production of foodstuffs, on agriculture,
cattle-rearing, hunting, fishing or gathering, there are also
tantalizingly brief references. In general, all the information
is fragmentary and haphazard, and it is not easy to reconstruct
from it a full picture of the food used by the various ethnic
groups inhabiting the Sudan. Nevertheless, we hope that, in spite
of the wide divergences between the various sources in point of
time, and despite the great extent and variety of the territory
that is covered, they will permit us to learn the basic facts
about the sources of the foods of the inhabitants of the northern
parts of West Africa, and how these foods were prepared.
19
2: VEGETABLE FOODSTUFFS
THE MIDDLE AGES AND SUBSEQUENT CHANGES

The principal source of food for the majority of the peoples
inhabiting West Africa in the Middle Ages was, as it still is,
agriculture — the cultivation of plants, particularly grain,
starch-containing root crops, leguminous plants and vegetables.
Food collecting (mainly the grain of wild grasses, and also of
the fruit of wild trees), animal husbandry (including bee-
keeping), hunting and fishing were also practised to a large
extent, providing, among other things, meat, milk and fish;
nevertheless, the foods obtained by these means were far less
significant than those obtained through cultivation. Clearly,
however, this was not the case in countries where geographical
or climatic conditions did not permit agriculture, or where the
populations were economically backward. Here animal husbandry
took the first place, followed by food collecting, fishing and
hunting — types of economy which in better-developed commun-
ities played only a subsidiary part. Thus, for example, the
economy of pastoral peoples (I am referring chiefly to the
Tuareg and the tribes of the Teda-Daza group, living as nomads
in the northern parts of West Africa and the adjoining areas of
the southern Sahara) was based mainly on the keeping of camels,
sheep, goats and cattle, and on the collection of the seeds and
roots of wild plants, particularly grasses. Some peoples in
southern Mauritania (Nemadi) lived almost exclusively by hunting,
while the basic source of livelihood of other West African
tribes, in the coastal areas, on the Senegal and Niger rivers or
on Lake Chad was fishing. It must be pointed out, however, that
even in the Sahara there were areas where, during the Middle
Ages, people practised agriculture or the cultivation of date-
palms, alongside animal husbandry or hunting. Moreover, the food-
stuffs used by the peoples of the Sahara, even those who did not
cultivate land themselves, included millet and other varieties
of grain imported chiefly from the more fertile areas of West
Africa and southern Morocco.
The privileged place of agriculture as the basic
source of food for the West African peoples has been maintained
up to the present in spite of the various changes, sometimes

profound, which took place in the economy of these areas at the
turn of the twentieth century to suit the interests of the
colonial powers. What has actually changed in the course of the
last few centuries is the type of food-plant. These changes took
place chiefly between the middle of the sixteenth century and
the end of the eighteenth, and were the result of the great
geographical discoveries of the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. These were, first, the voyages of the
Portuguese which led to the discovery of the sea route to India
and 'the other countries of South-east Asia, which in turn
facilitated contacts, through the intermediacy of Portuguese
factories, "between these countries and the West African coast
and, second, the discovery of America. This was followed by a
growing demand for labour by the Spanish and Portuguese colonists
in the New World which led to a tremendous growth in the Negro
slave trade, Africans, mainly West Africans, being exported to
America in great numbers. This contributed to closer economic
contacts between western Africa and the newly discovered
continent.
The consequences were a large-scale influx into West
Africa of South Asian plants, and, in still greater number, of
American plants, which rapidly displaced the cultivation of
many basic local edible plants. Thus, for example, in about
1520-40 there was an extension in West Africa of the cultivation
of the coconut tree, which came from southern Asia and the East
African coast. It was from America that West Africa obtained
maize and sweet potatoes in the sixteenth century, in the
seventeenth century cassava and pineapple, and in the eighteenth
century, guava and groundnuts. The extent to which West
African food changed, and how quickly this occurred, can be
illustrated by information given by the traveller S. M. X.
G-olberry who visited the West African coasts between 1785 and
1787, and who described the economy of the Bambuk country
between the Bafing and Paleme rivers in the basin of the upper
Senegal — that is, in the West African interior — inhabited
by a people of the Mande group. According to his information,
the basic edible plants cultivated in that country, inhabited
by a rather primitive population, even at this date included
plants of American origin, namely maize, cassava and sweet
21 2: Vegetable foodstuffs
potatoes, in addition to the local millet, beans, water-melons

and the "pistachio-peas" eaten roased. This last name may have
meant either local Bambara groundnuts (bot. Voandzeia), or
American groundnuts, now an important source of wealth in
Senegal. This process of the displacement of local crops by
4 newcomers from abroad has continued up to the present. Our task
now will be to establish, from the rich though fragmentary
material in the medieval Arabic sources, what was the nourish-
ment of the West African peoples prior to the basic changes
brought about during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
GRAIN
As we have said, vegetable foods, played the most important role
in the feeding of the greater part of the population of West
Africa, in the Middle Ages as at the present day. These were
obtained either by collecting seeds, fruits, roots, tubers and
other parts of wild plants (which in some cases for instance
rice and some other grasses assumed the dimensions of an actual
crop and were of great economic value), or by the cultivation
of various plants rich in carbohydrates, protein and sometimes
fats. This second process was of basic importance to the West
African economy. Many of the cultivable plants were of West
African origin — for example the local varieties of millet,
fonio, yams and beans — and had been domesticated long before
the time we are considering from species which grew wild in. the
savannas or in the border country between savanna and tropical
forest.
Ibn al-PaqTh al-HamadhanT, the earliest known Arabic
author who writes about the food of the peoples of West Africa,
already emphasizes the part played by cultivated plants in the
food eaten by the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ghana, which
also included parts of present-day Mauritania and Mali. He wrote
5,6 that they ate beans and a kind of millet known as dukhn. There
is further information from the late tenth century about the
great importance of the same plants in the economy of another
country at the eastern end of our area, in the Lake Chad region.
Arab geographers in the early Middle Ages called this country,
or at least part of it, Zaghawa; this name was also applied to
the tribe living in the borderland between Wadai and Darfur
which still uses the name, and also to various allied peoples,
including the Bulgeda, Kreda, Teda, Daza and others. Al-MuhallabT,

who wrote between 975 and 996, in a passage of his now-lost work
quoted in Yaqut's geographical dictionary (early thirteenth
century), says that an important part was played by sorghum
millet (Arabic dhura), beans and wheat in the economy of the
7 Zaghawa country (perhaps also of Borkou and Kanem).
There is also other Arabic evidence to confirm the
prime importance of the cultivated edible plants in the food of
the West African peoples, Al-cOmarT (who wrote between 1342 and
1349), writing of the historic state of Mali which had then
reached the height of its development, states that the principal
food of its people was rice, funT (fonio, see below), wheat
(which, however, was scarce there) and, above all, sorghum
millet which provided food not only for the people but also for
8 their riding horses and pack animals. The same author writing
of Kanem, which formed a joint state with Bornu in the fourteenth
century, said that the principal food of its people was rice,
9 corn (wheat?) and sorghum millet.
There are also references of a more general nature
which emphasize the existence and importance of plant cultiva-
tion, and of various kinds of millet in particular, in the
economy of West Africa between the early tenth century and the
10 early sixteenth century. Leo Africanus (1526) says of the
11 countries on the Niger that they were entirely suitable for
cultivation and that corn grew there in abumdance; al-BakrT
(1068), in his description of the kingdom of Ghana in the
western Sudan, says that the people there sowed twice a year,
once at the time of the Niger flood, and again when the ground
12 was still wet. In another place he speaks of the ripening of
13 ears of corn and of gleaning, again in Ghana.
Al-BakrT gives indirect information on the economically
important cultivation of crops in mixed farming in the country
of Mallal (Mallei), a name which very probably means the later
MalT (Malli, Melli). According to him, this country suffered
from drought, a disaster which lasted several years, and did not
diminish, despite the fact that the still pagan population of
the country brought offerings of cows and oxen in such numbers
14 as nearly to exterminate their herds. Ibn Bat-futa records that
during his stay in Mali (1352-3), a Muslim faqTh (jurist) from a
distant province of the country brought news of a locust
23 2: Vegetable foodstuffs.
disaster which, he claimed, had been sent by God to destroy the

15 crops of that province. Both these references clearly testify
to the important part played by the cultivation of plants, and
of grain in particular, in the state of MalT. This is corrob-
orated by another passage in Leo Africanus!s work from which it
appears that "Melli" (MalT) — or at least the area near the
capital of this country wliich bore the same name (now Niani near
the confluence of the Sankarani river with the Niger) — had
16 grain in profusion. Leo Africanus writes that Tombutto
(Timbuctu), one of the principal commercial centres of the
Songhai state (Gao), where he probably stayed in about 1512f was
17 rich in corn. Similar information about the town of G-ao, the
capital of the Songhai state, is given by ad-DimashqT, the Arab
cosmographer who wrote in the first half of the fourteenth
century. He reports that on the banks of the river flowing
through the town of Kaukau (Gao) there grew wheat (qamh) and
18 various kinds of grain. The importance of the cultivation of
edible plants is also confirmed by Leo Africanus, who reports
that the population of the small provincial towns and villages
in the country of Gago (Gao) consisted of agriculturalists and
19 pastoralists.
On the other hand, corn production was rare in the
countries adjoining the Sahara, and in the oases in its southern
regions. Al-cOmarT, for example, records that the inhabitants of
the Berber kingdom of Audaghast (with a capital of the same name
20 in present-day southern Mauritania) had little corn. He says
21 the same thing of the kingdom of Tadmekka, north-east of Gao.
This is confirmed by al-BakrT, who records that millet (Arabic
dhura, sorghum) and other kinds of grain were imported to
Tadmekka from Negroland (i.e. from the western Sudan proper).
But he also reports that the food used by the people of Tadmekka
included a certain kind of grain produced by the land without
22 cultivation. This refers to the collecting of certain grasses,
which, as the text shows, must have been of fairly high economic
value. Similarly, according to al-c0marT, the people of the Air
23 sultanate had only a small amount of grain.
By contrast with the Sahara borderlands, in the coun-
tries inhabited by the Hausa people grain was cultivated on a
large scale. This information we owe to Leo Africanus, who
emphasizes that in the province of Cano (Kano), corn grew in
abundance, and the people were either pastoralists or agricul-

24 turalists. Corn (millet?) was similarly cultivated in the
province of Gobir, where it was sown in pools left by rain water
(in the dried-up river Gulbi-n-Kaba), just as it is today. The
provinces of Zamfara and Zegzeg, Leo Africanus reports, also had
25 an abundance of corn. According to him, the people of Bornu
cultivated millet as well as "some other kinds of corn unknown
26 to us". These could include, for example, fonio (also known as
acha).
Millet
It seems that the principal kind of grain in the widest sense of
the word, apart from rice, cultivated in the Sudanic (i.e.
northern) zone of West Africa in the tenth to sixteenth centuries
was millet. In the medieval Arabic literature, and in the early
Portuguese sources, and later in the reports of travellers and
scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, millet
appears under various names, often hard to identify, if not
altogether unidentifiable with the varieties defined by
botanists. Sometimes the early authors and even present-day
research workers apply the same name to two different kinds of
27 millet, or apply two names to the same kind. We shall now try
to list, analyse and, whenever possible, to introduce some order
into the rich variety of names applied to the different kinds of
millet. On this basis we shall then proceed to outline approx-
imately the areas of cultivation of the two basic kinds of
millet which we know were grown in West Africa,
These two kinds- of millet are: bulrush or pearl millet
(French: millet africain, mil chandelle, petit mil; German:
Negerhirse or Negerkorn; bot. Pennisetum typhoideum or
28 P. spicatum, formerly Penicillaria spicata ) and sorghum or
Guinea corn, great millet (French: sorgho, gros mil; German:
29 sorghum, indische Hirse; bot.: Sorghum vulgare and Andropogon).
In the medieval Arabic sources, bulrush millet appears under the
name of dukhn or aniir (enelT, enilp and sorghum under the name
dura, durra, dhura etc. But, as Mauny has pointed out, Pennisetum
typhoideum may also be concealed under the name dura and its
30 variations.
Bulrush millet
Let us begin with the references in the medieval Arabic sources
•X-
31 to Pennisetum typhoideum, i.e. bulrush millet.

Ibn SacTd, a thirteenth-century geographer, describing

countries on the Niger inhabited by innumerable Negro peoples,
reports that in addition to beans they cultivated a grain which
they called anilT (etc.) which the Europeans knew under the name
32 of banj (banij), while the Arabs called it dura. As we have
already said, Arabic dura properly means Sorghum vulgare, but
may sometimes also mean Pennisetum typhoideum. On the other hand,
the word ban.j (bani j) is the Arabic equivalent of the Spanish
panizo (kind of millet), the word being derived in turn from the
33 Latin panicium or panicum, meaning millet. Finally, anilT
(another possible pronounciation is enelT) is a metathesis of
34 the Berber word illan, derived from the Latin milium — millet,
35 Dozy sees in it one of the names for Pennisetum typhoideum.
36 According to Barth, the local name used in Walata in the
western Sudan to designate "Negro corn" (Pennisetum typhoideum)
was en&li, which is the exact equivalent of the anilT recorded
by Ibn SacTd. In another place Barth reports that this was the
name given to Pennisetum typhoideum in the Berber dialect of the
37 Tuareg tribe of the Auelimmiden (Auellimiden, Aulimmiden, etc).
Later errors may have been due to the fact that the same
38 traveller reports a similar word,, engli, as 'a name in the
Auelimmiden language for the kind of millet called Guinea corn,
i.e. Sorghum vulgare, by Barth himself. Another European writer,
Jackson, quotes a different form of the Sudanic name for
39 Pennisetum typhoideum, namely allila, which is simply a deforma-
tion of anilT, or can be directly referred to the Berber word
illan.
The word anilT also occurs more than once in Ibn
Battuta's account of his travels to designate a variety of
"Sudan millet". For example, in the description of the salt-
mine at Taghaza in the western Sahara and the adjoining miners'
settlement, we find that the population was eating, among other
40 things, anilT imported from Negroland (Arabic: Bilad as-Sudan).
A little later, Ibn Ba-ftu-fa reports that in the town of Twalatan
(Walata), at the southern edge of the Sahara, on the way to the
town of MalT, the food of the people included foods made from
41 anilT. This foodstuff could be obtained in every Negro village
on the route from Walata to MalT, but it was imported to Walata
from the village of ZagharT, on the same route ten days' dis-
« -X-
42 tance from the town.
Another name used by medieval Arabic authors for

43 Pennisetum typhoideum (Penicillaria etc.) is dukhn. It is first
used in the description of the state of Ghana referred to at the
beginning of this chapter, in the work of the geographer Ibn
al-FaqTh al-Hamadhani, who states that the food of the people of
this country consisted of beans and a kind of millet (in the
44 text — dura), known as • dukhn. Al-MuhallabT (who wrote before
996), the Arab geographer quoted by Yaqut (early thirteenth
century)-, also mentions dukhnt which, according to him, was the
second kind of corn (after wheat) cultivated in the town of
45 Audaghast. According to a more correct and fuller version of
the quotation from al-MuhallabT!s work given by Abu ^l-Fida3,
people at Audaghast were sowing wheat, dukhn, durra (sorghum),
46 beans and peas. Prom the fact that the text mentions both dukhn
and durra, it is clear that two different kinds of millet are
involved, one of which is Pennisetum typhoideum, and the other
Sorghum vulgare. Al-MaqrTzT, a fifteenth-century author who
lived and wrote in Egypt, also mentions dukhn, which- he also
calls qamh as-Sudan ("Sudan wheat"), noting that in appearance
47 it was like barsim, i.e! clover, Trifolium alexandrinum L.
The identification of dukhn with Pennisetum typhoideum
(Penicillaria spicata etc.) has been attested beyond any doubt
by Nachtigal, who distinguishes this kind of millet from Sorghum
48 vulgare (durra).
In addition to names like anili etc. and dukhn, used
for bulrush millet both by medieval Arabic authors and by the
peoples of the present-day Sudan, some other local names are
also in use. In the central Sudan, this grain is sometimes
49 called qasab, qsab. The Wolof call this kind of millet (or a
•ft -ft
50,51 variety of it) sanyo (also suna); the Hausa — gero or maiava
52,53 (a variety of the first);* the Teda — annera; and the Kanuri —
54 argum moro.
The Portuguese called the kind of millet cultivated by
the Berber Azeneghes (Zenaga in southern Mauritania) milho dos
Negros ("millet of the Negroes"). The name is given by Fernandes
•ft -ft
55,56 (1506-7); his editors hold the view that sorghum is implied.
But should we not identify the "millet of the Negroes" with
Pennisetum typhoideum, which. al-MaqrxzT in the fifteenth century
57 termed "the wheat of the Negroes", and another medieval Arabic
__ _• -ft
author ban.j (banij) as-Sudan, "millet of the Negroes"?
As we see from the references cited above, Pennisetum

ty-phoideum was cultivated in the countries on the Niger, includ-
ing places on the way from Walata to the town of MalT, at
Audaghast and in the historic state of Ghana (on the borders of
the former French Sudan, Senegal and Mauritania). This kind of
millet was also exported from the Sudan to Walata and Taghaza
in the western Sudan, where it was .in general use. The inference
from the information given in Arabic sources is that Pennisetum
typhoideum cultivation was restricted to the basin of the middle
Niger and adjacent lands, i.e. to one part only of West Africa.
But both in the nineteenth century and at the present day, this
kind of millet has been cultivated much more widely. According
to Barth (1849-55), it was cultivated not only in the basin of
the middle Niger, in Timbuctu, Arabinda, Say and Sinder, but
also in the area occupied by the Hausa at Kano, Katsina and
between Say and Sokoto, and in Air and the neighbouring coun-
59 tries Tintellust, Agades and Damerghu. The extension of the
cultivation of Pennisetum typhoideum (Penicillaria) far to the
east is also attested by Nachtigal, who speaks of the cultivation
of dukhn at Tibesti, Kanem (Ngigmi) Bornu, Borkou, in part of
Bagirmi, in Wadai and Darfur — in almost all cases together
60 with sorghum. For the Hausa country and for present-day Nigeria
in general, we have the cultivation of Pennisetum typhoideum
attested among the pagan tribes on the border between Bauchi and
61,62 Kano, among the Jerawa tribe in Bauchi, among the Kontagora
63 and Zuru peoples in the Ilorin province, among the Achipowa to
64 the north-east of the middle Niger, and also in the Nupe
65 province. It is also cultivated by the Wolof and the Serer in
Senegal and Gambia; in the case of the Wolof, it is grown
66 together with sorghum.
So wide an extension of the cultivation of dukhn can
hardly be a recent development of the past few centuries. The
fact that there are no references in the medieval Arabic works
to confirm the occurrence of this kind of millet between the
estuaries of the Senegal and the Gambia and Darfur may well be
the result of the fragmentary character of the source material
available. But it is also possible that dukhn may sometimes be
implied, as I have already suggested, by the Arabic name dura
(etc.) which is much more frequently mentioned by Arabic authors
67 dealing with West Africa.
It has been argued by botanists that there were two

separate centres of bulrush-millet cultivation, one in West
Africa and the other in the Lake Chad area, each of them involv-
68 ing several varieties of this kind of millet. It may be added,
moreover, that Pennisetum typhoideum is a grain native, if not
69 to West Africa, then to the central Sudan. According to Cobley,
this kind of millet was derived from wild varieties in this very
70 region of Africa, in the savannah zone; thus, its domestication
must have taken place there. It does best on light sandy soils,
71 which are not good for sorghum. Nowadays its cultivation extends
widely throughout the tropical zone of the Old World, including
India and Pakistan, where its popularity is almost equal to that
of sorghum, although it is inferior to it in nutritional value,
72 and provides animal fodder of lower quality.
Sorghum
Before we go on to discuss the references in the medieval Arabic
sources to sorghum, i.e. dura (always remembering.that the name
may sometimes also imply bulrush millet, i.e. Pennisetum
typhoideum) it seems advisable to examine some of its properties.
Sorghum, i.e. dura, a seed-producing plant, must first
be distinguished from Sorghum saccharatum, a kind producing a
stem with much sugar in it. Sorghum is one of the most important
cultivated plants in the world. It supplies the basic food for a
considerable portion of the population of Africa, India and the
drier parts of the tropics in other parts of the world. Accord-
ing to earlier theories (Schweinfurth, 1891) the origins of
sorghum cultivation (dura cultivation) in Egypt went back only to
the Romano-Byzantine period. In fact, the oldest seeds found in
Egypt come from the Coptic period (sixth to seventh centuries
A.D. )• De Candolle ('1883) supposed that Sorghum vulgare came
from the tropical areas of Africa, but he had no convincing
proof to support this. N. I. Vavilov (1935) thought that tlie
cultivation of Sorghum saccharatum originated in Abyssinia,
whereas Sorghum vulgare came from Hindustan. But in the follow-
ing year, J. D. Snowden was able to prove that Sorghum vulgare
came from Africa- and that it had for its predecessor Sorghum
arundinaceum, a wild grass widely disseminated in the tropical
part of West Africa. Today it is assumed that there were three
different foci where Sorghum vulgare was domesticated: 1) West
Africa; 2) Nile-Abyssinia", and 3) East Africa. It is further
suggested that Africa must have produced different varieties of

grainy sorghum before they were formed in India. This hypothesis
is put forward by Porteres in a paper read at a conference in
73 London in 1961.
Stanton, considering the cultivation of sorghum in
Nigeria (in another paper read at the same conference), comes to
the conclusion that the most important West African variety of
dura evolved as part of the western Sudanic agricultural complex,
probably in western Nigeria, in the Sudan savanna zone, so that
the peoples who domesticated it should presumably be included in
74 the Kwa group, Mauny is of opinion that the origins of the
75 cultivation of sorghum in West Africa go back to Neolithic times.
In any case, it now seems certain that Sorghum vulgare is a plant
native to West Africa, and that there is no obstacle to regarding
most of the medieval information provided by Arabic sources on
the plant dura (durra, dhura, etc.) as relating to this plant.
According to Port&res, the Italian name of the plant,
sorgo, has no connection as is often suggested, with Latin surgo
"I rise", which would allegedly refer to the outstanding height
of the ears of this corn; it is rather, so this author asserts,
of Hamitic origin. Considering the Arabic name dura etc.,
Porteres compares it with the Sanscrit words zurna, zoorna, as
76 well as with the Nilotic words zor, gor, djor. Of the modern
West African names for sorghum, we must mention wendi or basi of
77 of the Wolof, aborak, kelenki and sibi (denoting three kinds of
sorghum, the white, the red and the black respectively) of the
78 Tuareg tribe of Auelimmiden, and ngaberi, ngafolit ngab&li in
79 Bornu.
The medieval Arabic sources attest the cultivation of
sorghum over the whole of West Africa, or rather, over the whole
of northern West Africa, beyond the southern limits of which not
a single Arabic traveller or merchant of the Middle Ages ever
went. Starting from the west, we should begin with the informa-
tion given by al-IdrTsT (1154) about the first (i.e. westernmost)
section of the first (i.e. southernmost) iqlTm or zone, an area
approximately that covered by present-day Senegal. According to
his information, the inhabitants of this part of the Sudan, a
country with an unusually dry and hot climate, cultivated dhura,
i.e. sorghum, as their only grain crop, and from it made some
80 kind of drink. This information is repeated by the same author
81 when he describes the Senegalese states of Takrur and Silla.

Al-BakrT (1068) also, speaking of Silla, confirms the occurrence
of sorghum without mentioning the cultivation of any other kind
82 of grain in these regions. The Wolof, who now live in Senegal
and in the neighbouring Gambia, cultivate both Pennisetum
83 typhoideum and Sorghum vulgare, which is their basic foodstuff.
The Wolof of Salum cultivate more sorghum than Pennisetum
typhoideum, whereas with the Serer it is the cultivation of
84 Pennisetum that is most important. Thus we see that some
changes in the cultivation of millet must have occurred in
Senegal in the course of the eight or nine centuries which
separate us from the period described by al-BakrT and al-IdrTsT.
Further north-east, at Audaghast, on the Sahara-Sudan
border, according to information from al-MuhallabT (before 996),
quoted by Yaqut (thirteenth century), the people cultivated both
85 dukhn (Pennisetum typhoideum) and dhura, i.e. sorghum. This
information is also quoted from al-MuhallabT in the first half
86 of the fourteenth century by the Arabic geographer Abu pl-PidaD.
But according to information given about a hundred years later
than al-MuhallabT by al-BakrT, the majority of the people in
87 Audaghast ate sorghum. This is further repeated (after al-BakrT)
88 by Watwa/J;, in about 1318.* Ad-DimashqT (first half of the
fourteenth century) reports that, apart from meat, sorghum was
89 the main foodstuff of the people of Audaghast. None of this
information, except that given by al-MuhallabT, constitutes
proof of sorghum cultivation in Audaghast — all that is attested
is its consumption. An argument against sorghum cultivation in
this area is that sorghum needs soils which are both damper and
heavier than those of Audaghast. Presumably the people of
Audaghast imported sorghum from areas of West Africa which were
wetter and lay further south. But according to Leo Africanus
(early sixteenth century), in the town of Gualata (Walata)
north-east of Audaghast, another town of the Sahara-Sudan
borders, and also in the kingdom of Gubir (Gobir), in addition
to millet (which here implies Pennisetum typhoideum). the people
cultivated a kind of round white grain like chick-pea which,
according to this traveller, was not found in Europe, and which
90 is presumably one of the varieties of sorghum. It must be
added that, according to al-BakrT, the Berber pastoral tribes
of the western Sahara used to import sorghum, evidently from the
91 adjacent western Sudan.

Al-QazwTnT, quoting Ibn al-FaqTh (the name doubtless
refers to Ibn al-FaqTh al-HamadhanT, who wrote at the beginning
of the tenth century), says that according to this source, the
food of the inhabitants of the Bilad at-Tibr ("land of gold
dust", now the area of the Lower Faleme and Bambuk in the upper
Senegal basin, between the Bafing and the Faleme) consisted of
92 sorghum and beans. Yaqut repeats this information in a somewhat
altered form, referring it not only to the "land of gold dust",
93 but also to the historic state of Ghana. It must be remembered
that the original version of this passage in Ibn al-FaqTh,
which related only to Ghana, mentions the kind of dura (Arabic
dhura, here: millet in general) cal-led dukhn, which has been
omitted in al-QazwTnT!s and YaqutTs quotations.
On the other hand there is no doubt that the millet
used as food in the land of MalT, according to information
contained in a geographical work by al- OmarT (1342-9), was
Sorghum vulgare. It was used, this author reports, not only as
food by the people, but also as fodder for horses and for beasts
94 of burden. This cannot be a reference to bulrush millet, but
only to sorghum, which provides excellent fodder for animals.
At Augham, a place close by the area of the historic
state of Ghana, and on the way from the town of Ghana (Koumbi
Saleh) to RaJs al MaJ (near present-day Timbuctu), four days*
journey from Ra3s al Ma 3 , sorghum (Arabic dhura) was cultivated;
the people of Augham made porridge ( aysh in Arabic) from its
95 grain.
We pass next to the banks of the Niger below Timbuctu,
which was the tribal territory of the Songhai, founders of the
state of Gao. Ibn Ba-ftu-Jja, who in 1353 went down the Niger through
this country, tells us that at a place on the way, on the bank
of the Niger, he drank duqnu (daqno, see below), a drink made of
pounded sorghum with the addition of a small amount of honey and
sour milk. At this place Ibn Batt^ta also expected to obtain
96 provisions of sorghum for further travel.
Maddasa lay to the north of the middle Niger. Accord-
ing to al-IdrTsT, sorghum grew there together with rice; the
97 grain, so this author reports, was big and made excellent food.
Barth also refers to the cultivation of sorghum on the middle
98 Niger, near the bend of the river.
Sorghum also provided food for the inhabitants of

Tadmekka, a desert town north-east of G-ao. This is attested by
al-BakrT, who adds that sorghum, like other kinds of grain, was
99 imported to Tadmekka from Negroland. Al-BakrTfs information is
100 repeated by Watwat (1318). Ad-DimashqT also mentions sorghum
being imported to Tadmekka, but without saying where it came
101 from.
According to Ibn Battuta, sorghum was also eaten at
the town of Takadda, capital of the Berber sultanate of that
name to the east of Tadmekka, on the way from Kaukau (Gao) to
102 Air. Ibn Battuta even records the price of sorghum at Takadda.
The situation presumably remained unaltered for centuries,
since Barth was able to give information on the cultivation and
consumption of sorghum in the nineteenth century in a number of
places in the territory of Air and in the neighbouring coun-
103 tries inhabited by Tuareg tribes.
We also have information dating from the first half
of the fourteenth century (al-c0marT, 1342-9) on the consumption
of sorghum in Kanem, a name which also covers Bornu, at that
104 time closely connected with Kanem. In modern times, too, sorghum
has been cultivated in the Lake Chad basin; this is attested in
105,106 the accounts of their travels by Barth and Nachtigal.
I have already suggested that it is in the Chad area
that one should localize the people, or tribal group, whom early
medieval Arabic authors call the Zaghawa. According to
al-MuhallabT (975-6), the inhabitants of their country cultivated
107 sorghum first and foremost. Al-IdrTsT, who in one passage of
108 . his work mentions sorghum among the foodstuffs of the Zaghawa,
in another place speaks of a tribe belonging to this group,
called the Saghwa or the Saghawa, living somewhere between the
middle Niger and the Lake Chad basin; he reports this tribe as
109 cultivating sorghum more than any other kind of grain.
Leo Africanus (early sixteenth century) gives a few
facts on the cultivation of millet, but usually without spec-
ifying which particular kind he is speaking about. The informa-
tion relates to G-ualata (Walata) (where, exceptionally, he
110 reports that both kinds of millet were cultivated), and also
111,112 to Casena (Katsina) and Zamfara in Hausaland, and the land of
113 Borno (Bornu).
Rice
With the two kinds of millet, Pennisetum typhoideum and Sorghum
vulgare» rice plays the most important part in the grain foods
of the peoples of West Africa, and particularly those of the
Sudanic zone. Rice includes both grain collected from wild
114 species, and that from the cultivated forms. Porte*res, one of
the most distinguished experts on the edible plants of Africa,
has noted that there are four basic varieties of rice in this
continent, of which two, Oryza Barthii and Oryza breviligulata,
grow in a wild state, whereas the other two, Oryza glaberrima
115 and Oryza sativa," are cultivated. The last variety is of
Asiatic origin, and was introduced into Africa at a comparatively
late date; 0. glaberrima is a variety of genuinely West African
origin, its ancestor being the wild variety 0. breviliûlata,
which occurs in the Sudan and in the Sahel (the Sudan-Sahara
borderlands), from the Atlantic to Lake Chad and to the Ubangi-
Shari. Port&res also comes to the conclusion that 0. glaberrima
was brought under cultivation about 1500 B.C. at two main
centres. The older of these, on the middle Niger, he associates
with the peoples of the old Nigritic civilization, and then with
the Mandingoes; the more recent centre, of secondary character,
in Senegambia, he associates with the peoples of the Megalithic
culture in this area which he says flourished about 1500-800 B.C.
Be this as it may, Porteres excludes the possibility of connect-
ing the cultivation of rice in Africa with the cultivation of
the plant in Asia. He asserts that the cultivation of rice in
Africa has evolved from the collecting of the local wild
116 varieties.
It seems that the distribution of the wild species of
rice whose grain is collected is somewhat larger than Porteres
suggests. Barth states that the wild species of rice grew in
areas extending from the southern districts of Bornu, Bagirmi
and Wadai to El-Haudh and Baghena, on the southern epLge of the
117 westernmost Sahara, and also in the forests of the Adamawa
118 country. Nachtigal reports that the wild species of rice grew
119 in Darfur. Schweinfurth, the well-known African scholar, in a
letter to Maurizio, mentions yet other areas where the wild
species of this plant grew on the African continent — Southern
Kordofan, Ethiopia (Abyssinia), the Nuer country (Bahr al-G-hazal),
on Lake Tanganyika, etc., also confirming its occurrence on the
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propellers, and Jack clambered aboard so that the pilot could let go,
they trundled over the ground, and took to the air without any
difficulty.
Both felt relieved now that they had a chance to fly once more. First
of all it was their policy to mount to a high level, where they could
hope to pass unnoticed over the numerous towns and villages that
still lay in the route to the fighting front beyond the border.
Of course everything looked strange to them below. They could
make out roads, and lines of rails over which laden trains were
passing back and forth; but though Tom had a map of Western
Germany with him he could not recognize a thing.
They were heading right, at any rate, and if allowed to proceed a
certain distance would surely strike their objective, the line where
the rival armies lay in their trenches.
Jack had also managed to stop the tiny leak in their tank before they
arose, which would help them greatly in conserving their store of
fuel. Neither of them knew how many miles they must fly before
reaching a friendly zone. It might be fifty, and it might only be
fifteen; but as long as a drop of gasolene remained in their tank they
meant to push steadily on.
Fortune was again kind to them, for in time they realized that they
were nearing the scene of warfare. The dense clouds of smoke in
the distance told them this, in the first place, and later on they
occasionally caught the dull concussion of the big guns that rocked
the earth every time they were discharged.
Now came the most critical time of all for the two young aviators. If
their arrival on the scene of action chanced to be noticed in time, a
flock of eager Fokker pilots would rise to intercept them. It would be
hard indeed if, after surmounting all the difficulties that had beset
their way thus far, they should be shot down when in sight of their
goal.
Tom exercised due vigilance. At the same time he found himself
gripped in a constant state of anxiety the nearer they drew to the
battlelines.
Planes were in sight, many of them, and the sausage-shaped
observation balloons swayed to and fro in double lines well back of
the front. Tom endeavored to pick his way along carefully. He had
Jack using the glass and searching the heavens to make out the
identity of every machine in sight.
As before, it turned out that the nimble Nieuports were the ones
doing “ceiling work,” while far below a German, defended by a flock
of aviatiks, was pushing forward, evidently intending to take a look
at what the French were doing.
The strain was soon over. Down came several of the guard planes,
after recognizing one of their own machines in the clumsy Caudron.
Tom saw that the entire trio had the familiar Indian head painted on
the body of the machines, showing that they were Americans. They
knew of the absence of the two young airmen and were delighted to
see them turn up after they had been given over as lost.
And so in due time Tom made as neat a landing in his own field as
any veteran could have done, amid the cheers of scores and scores
of pilots, mechanicians and French soldiers, who came running like
mad when they saw who was dropping from the skies.
Although utterly exhausted and almost frozen after their bitter
experience, Tom and Jack could not retreat until they had shaken
hands with dozens of the noisy throng that surrounded them. After
that they were at least no longer cold, for their fingers had been
squeezed, and hearty slaps laid on their backs by the excited
aviators.
When later on they told their story, modestly enough, to be sure,
and Tom held up the precious paper which he had recovered in such
a miraculous fashion, they received a perfect ovation from the
crowd.
Then, one day later on, the boys discovered to their great
astonishment, and delight as well, that they had been cited in the
Orders of the Day, each being awarded the coveted Croix de Guerre,
and Tom being advanced to the grade of corporal in the French
service, which for one so young was a very high honor indeed.
Of course, Tom took advantage of the first opportunity that arose to
write a long account of their adventure and send it home, also
enclosing the precious paper, after taking a copy of it to hold in case
the original was lost in the mails. It may be said in passing that in
due time Mr. Raymond received this letter with its welcome
enclosure, and never ceased to marvel at the remarkable manner in
which his son had recovered the lost document.
After they had recovered from their strenuous journey the two
young aviators were more than ever anxious for continued service.
The taste of peril had sharpened their appetites, it seemed, and
made them eager to meet with further exciting experiences in their
chosen work.
All the members of the famous escadrille were very fond of the boys,
and each seemed to deem it a privilege to coach them in the
thousand and one problems that daily confront a war aviator.
Jack sometimes was seen to muse, as though his thoughts had
taken a backward flight. Tom imagined he might be thinking of those
at home, and once even exhibited more or less sympathy for his
chum, when, to his surprise, and also amusement, Jack unblushingly
admitted that the one he was thinking of chanced to be pretty little
Bessie Gleason.
“It’s a queer thing, Tom,” he remarked, when the other chuckled,
“but somehow I find myself wondering whether I’ll ever run across
that girl and her stern guardian again. Since you played in such
great luck and pounced on Adolph Tuessig in such a remarkable way,
perhaps, who knows, I may find myself face to face with Bessie one
of these days. Anyhow, I hope so.”
“You never can tell,” was all Tom would say in reply; and yet, if you
read the second volume of this series, entitled “The Air Service Boys
Over the Enemy’s Lines; or, The German Spy’s Secret,” you will find
that not only did Jack have his wish realized, but that a fresh and
most astonishing array of thrilling happenings overtook the two
chums while they were still “flying for France.”
THE END.
Up-to-date Juveniles at the
popular price of 50c. each
AIR SERVICE BOYS FLYING FOR FRANCE By Chas. A. Beach

or The Young Heroes of the Lafayette Escadrille.
AIR SERVICE BOYS OVER THE ENEMY’S
By Chas. A. Beach
LINES
or The German Spy’s Secret.
AIR SERVICE BOYS OVER THE RHINE By Chas. A. Beach
or Fighting Above the Clouds.
ANDY AT YALE By Roy Eliot Stokes
or The Great Quadrangle Mystery.
ARMY BOYS IN FRANCE By Homer Randall
or From Training Camp to Trenches.
ARMY BOYS IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES By Homer Randall
or Hand to Hand Fights with the Enemy.
ARMY BOYS ON THE FIRING LINE By Homer Randall
or Holding Back the German Drive.
BERT WILSON AT THE WHEEL By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON’S FADEAWAY BALL By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON WIRELESS OPERATOR By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON MARATHON WINNER By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON AT PANAMA By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON’S TWIN CYLINDER RACER By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON ON THE GRIDIRON By J. W. Duffield
BERT WILSON IN THE ROCKIES By J. W. Duffield
By Captain Taylor
BOB SPENCER, THE LIFE SAVER
Armitage
or Guarding the Coast for Uncle Sam.
DAVE FEARLESS AFTER A SUNKEN
By R. Rockwood
TREASURE
or The Rival Ocean Divers.
DAVE FEARLESS ON A FLOATING ISLAND By R. Rockwood
or The Cruise of the Treasure Ship.
DAVE FEARLESS AND THE CAVE OF
By R. Rockwood
MYSTERY
or Adrift on the Pacific.
HIRAM, THE YOUNG FARMER By Burbank L. Todd
or Making the Soil Pay.
JOE STRONG, THE BOY WIZARD By Vance Barnum
or Mysteries of Magic Exposed.
JOE STRONG ON THE TRAPEZE By Vance Barnum
or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer.
JOE STRONG, THE BOY-FISH By Vance Barnum
or The Marvelous Doings of a Boy-Fish.
JOE STRONG ON THE HIGH WIRE By Vance Barnum
or A Motorcycle of the Air.
JOE STRONG AND HIS WINGS OF STEEL By Vance Barnum
or A Young Acrobat in the Clouds.
NAVY BOYS AFTER A SUBMARINE By Halsey Davidson
or Protecting the Giant Convoy.
NAVY BOYS CHASING A SEA RAIDER By Halsey Davidson
or Landing a Million Dollar Prize.
NAVY BOYS BEHIND THE BIG GUNS By Halsey Davidson
or Sinking the German U-Boats.
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
373 FOURTH AVENUE NEW YORK
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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West African Food in the Middle Ages

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A Hermit s Cookbook Monks Food and Fasting in the

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A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages Martyn

with the assistance of

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 1974

This digitally printed version 2008

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 72-88615

Foreword by J.D. Fage vii

No one can gainsay the importance of Arabic sources for the

literate in Arabic and were themselves producing chronicles and

in the history of West Africa and its peoples to have acquired a

I would like to express my profound gratitude to Professor

(BE*- TADMEKKA AIR

Map of West and North Africa in the Middle Ages:

The period covered by this book is often referred to by

of sub-Saharan Africa. Just as an Africanist who does not know

The period covered by this book begins with the tenth

occupied "by permanent settled populations is gradual, and even

earliest of the known states of the western Sudan. The earliest

24 immigrants from North Africa. There is no doubt that the towns

legend, in about the middle of the seventh century these people

records having heard of the state of YufT(mis-spelt for the

This, in very brief outline, is a summary of the ethnic

1: ARABIC SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF THE FOODSTUFFS

Let us go on now to a "brief review of the Arabic sources contain-

inhabitants of West Africa comes from al-IdrTsT, the author of

12 no details are known about them.

origin who included the Sudan (1352-3) in his numerous travels

published in Paris in 1896-8. In 1931 the MS of another version

THE MIDDLE AGES AND SUBSEQUENT CHANGES

up to the present in spite of the various changes, sometimes

potatoes, in addition to the local millet, beans, water-melons

including the Bulgeda, Kreda, Teda, Daza and others. Al-MuhallabT,

disaster which, he claimed, had been sent by God to destroy the

abundance, and the people were either pastoralists or agricul-

31 to Pennisetum typhoideum, i.e. bulrush millet.

Ibn SacTd, a thirteenth-century geographer, describing

Another name used by medieval Arabic authors for

As we see from the references cited above, Pennisetum

It has been argued by botanists that there were two

suggested that Africa must have produced different varieties of

81 when he describes the Senegalese states of Takrur and Silla.

91 adjacent western Sudan.

Sorghum also provided food for the inhabitants of

AIR SERVICE BOYS FLYING FOR FRANCE By Chas. A. Beach

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.