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‘He Swalloweth the Ground with Fiercenes and Rage’ The Horse in the Central Sudan

I. Its Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Humphrey J. Fisher
Humphrey J. Fisher
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

This study of horses, mainly in the central Sudan, presents impressions rather than a complete survey of the evidence. At the time when written records for the Sudan region begin,c. A.D. 1000, horses were evidently well established there. Their coming preceded the arrival of Islam. The first introduction of horses is sometimes attributed to nomads, such as the Zaghawa round Lake Chad, who, so the argument runs, used them to found larger and more militant states. Some evidence, however, suggests, although tentatively, that such nomadic immigrants were chiefly camel people, who enlarged their use of horses because these were more suitable than camels in the Sudan region, and because the horse was already there. Careful reading of the Bayajidda legend raises doubts as to whether it has anything to do with the introduction of the horse into Hausa, or into the Sudan as a whole. All this lends support to the idea that horses became established in the Sudan at a far earlier date, perhaps through trans-Saharan links recorded in the horse-chariots of rock art. Occasional references to wild horses suggest that survival and reproduction were not dependent on imported stock. Numbers of peoples, from Kaniaga in the west to Dar Tama in the east, possessed their own horses; many of these peoples were isolated from any network of trans-Saharan communication, and many were uninterested in large-scale state formation. These horses, apparently always very small, may perhaps be nicknamed the southern Sudanic breed. Larger horses, presumably directly or indirectly descended from later imports, are particularly associated with certain areas, especially Bornu/Mandara. The trans-Saharan trade in horses, admittedly of considerable importance, may have been given undue prominence by scholars who have overlooked the possibility of east-west trade–of horses arriving in Hausa, for example, from no further afield than Bornu. Acute illness and mortality among imported stock must also have influenced trade, and reduced the contribution of such animals to local herds and stables.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 1972 , pp. 367 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 I am encouraged to do this by the fact that Robin Law has recently embarked upon a detailed study of the horse in the western and central Sudan. The results of his work, as they become available, will cancel, correct or confirm my notions. He has kindly read a draft of this paper and has made a number of valuable suggestions, all of which have been taken up and some of which are now incorporated. I have also been greatly helped by the papers on the horse in Africa, submitted to the African History Seminar of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University in 1962−3.

2 Abou-Obeïd-el-Bekri, , Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale, ed. Mac, Guckin de Slane (Paris, 1965), 332, Arabic 177.Google Scholar Notice, however, that al-Idrisi, a century later, dwells more on camels, mentioning for example Ghiyaro, a town eleven days from Ghana and tributary to it, using camels on slaving expeditions; Dozy, R. and de Goeje, M. J., Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne par Edrui (Leyden, 1866), II. For the possible military superiority of camels in barren country, see below, p. 7.Google Scholar

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4 Quoted in al-‘Umari, 56 n.

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52 Quoted in Clapperton (1829), 335.Google Scholar

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56 Ibid. II, 622. Nachtigal had earlier (II, 302–3) heard rumours of thousands of horsemen from the more or less subject pagan regions of Bagirmi flocking to join Abu Sekkin, but this is likely to have been in part a gloss of military propaganda in time of crisis.

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71 Al-'Umari, 94.

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81 Ibid. IV, 424–5; in Takadda he bought two riding camels for under 40 ducats, IV, 444–5.

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83 Ibid. II, 29.

84 Ibid. II, 29–30.

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87 Ibid. III, 830.

88 Leo, , III, 825.Google Scholar

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91 Ibid. III, 6.

92 Sudanese Memoirs, III, 6–7 and notes; he also exempted the Tura from all military service.Google Scholar

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101 Tax-gatherers may also have been interested. Marco Polo mentions the handsome profits made by the king of Aden, from export duties levied on horses going to India (Yule (1926), II, 438); and his editor added that the Portuguese required imported horses to enter through Goa, in order to collect a duty of £15 or £20 a head (II, 455 n.). I do not know whether tax records might be found in North Africa to illustrate trans-Saharan traffic in horses, but it seems a likely possibility.

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103 Ibid. IV, 254.

104 Ibid. IV, 345 and note, 378.

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109 Ibid. IV, 149, 181.

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115 There are many descriptions of this sort of thing: see Denham, and Clapperton, (1826), 197–8 (Denham's account) (in Kuka); Macleod (1912), 53 (south of Marwa); Alexander (1908), II, I, and Nachtigal (1971), IV, 35.Google Scholar

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120 The economics of the horse trade in Africa are little known. Perhaps comparisons might usefully be sought elsewhere in the Muslim world, for example in the export of horses from Dhafar to India; Ibn Battuta, ed. Gibb, II, 382, and Yule (1926), 11, 340, 4.44. Ibn Battuta describes also mass exports of Turkish horses to India, and though ‘the greater part of the horses die or are stolen’, heavy taxes are imposed, and so on, ‘there remains a handsome profit for the traders in these horses’; II, 478−9. Marco Polo said that the Indian princes were so avid to possess horses that they would pay huge prices for them, but then treated them so foolishly and ignorantly that at the end of the year, of more than 2,000 imported, not a hundred remained alive; Yule (1926), II, 340, 450. Even with the built-in obsolescence of overproductive western society in mind, this degree of extravagance is hard to credit.