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Christian Traces and a Franciscan Mission in the Central Sudan, 1700–1711

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Richard Gray
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Extract

In 1700 reports from Tripoli reached the congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome that Christians, ‘little or uninstructed in the Faith’, were living in Bornu. Further enquiries revealed that these rumours related not to the kingdom of Bornu, but to a neighbouring, rival kingdom, that of ‘Gourourfa’ or ‘Carnorfa’. Two sons of the ruler of Bornu, interviewed in Cairo, stated that in ‘Canorfa’ there were people ‘who venerate the Cross and erect it over the houses and churches’, while the French Consul at Tripoli reported how he had seen slaves from ‘Gouroufa’ who made the sign of the Cross. In June 1710 two Franciscans, attempting to establish contact with these ‘Christians’, set out from Tripoli, passed through Murzuk and Agades, and were later reported to have died in Katsina in August 1711.

Hausa and Bornu sources indicate that these reports almost certainly referred to the Kwararafa, who on several occasions in the seventeenth century attacked Kano and Bornu. It is then pointed out that a Maltese cross was one of the motifs still used in the twentieth century as a decoration by an Aku of Wukari, a ruler of the Jukun, who are among the principal survivors of the Kwararafa. At least a section of the inhabitants of Wukari also preserved a clearly remembered tradition of having taken part in a migratory journey from the Nilotic Sudan to the Benue. It is suggested therefore that the reports of the French consul and the Franciscans, although garbled and consisting in the main of second-hand evidence, strengthen the possibility that the Maltese crosses used among the Jukun, in Nupe and at Benin indicate an influence which emanated originally from Christian Nubia and is perhaps connected with the Kisra traditions.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 1967 , pp. 383 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

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32 Ibid. 19, 206, and plate I.

33 Mr William Fagg of the British Museum writes that ‘the “Maltese crosses” on the Aku of Wukari's clothing may be illusory, for the technique used is appliqué, in which the easiest designs are combinations of triangles, especially in “solid” appliqué’. (Letter dated I June 1966).Google Scholar

34 Mr Arnold Rubin, who has undertaken field-work among the Jukun, informs me that photographs of Agbumanu I, Ashumanu IV, and Agbumanu IV show a number of motifs on their robes, ‘but nowhere, as far as I can tell, anything resembling a Maltese cross’. Down the sleeve worn by the present Aku is a motif somewhat resembling a Maltese cross, but ‘given the triangular basis of most of the other motifs’, Mr Rubin would be inclined to doubt whether it should be so interpreted. (Personal letter dated 27 July 1966.)

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36 I am grateful to Professor H. F. C. Smith and Mr Arnold Rubin for their comments on an earlier draft.Google Scholar

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48 The comet mentioned in the text must have been that seen in Kano during September 1882.Google Scholar

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