African Sources for African History

Edition d'un récit en mandinka par Maalaŋ Galisa (octobre 1988) sur la constitution et les conditions de vie au Kaabu, territoire situé entre la Gambie, le Sénégal et la Guinée-Bissau, connu depuis le 16e siècle et détruit vers 1867. La gamme des sujets couvre: le peuplement, le gouvernement, les codes de conduite des guerriers, religieux, esclaves et 'hôtes étrangers', les règles de l'esclavage, du mariage et de la succession, la coexistence des religions, les relations entre groupes d'âge et de genre.
Le texte diffère d'autres qui se focalisent sur un unique fondateur-patriarche, Tiramakan de l'épopée de Sunjata. Galisa parle du sud-est du Kaabu, à la frontière avec la Guinée. Il ajoute des couleurs locales au modèle mandinka, évoquant la puissance féminine et certains conflits violents.

Edition of a recital in Mandinka by Maalaŋ Galisa (October 1988) on the political constitution and living conditions in Kaabu, a territory situated between present Gambia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, known since the 16th century, definitely destroyed in 1867. The narrative presents a range of topics covering governance, codes of conduct of warriors, clerics, slaves and 'strangers', rules of slavery, marriage and succession, the cohabitation of different religions, relations of age and gender.
This text is distinctive from others focussing on a single founder-patriarch, Tiramakan of the Epic of Sunjata. Galisa focuses on South-eastern Kaabu, bordering on the region of Labé (Guinea). He adds local colours to the Mandinka model, depicting powerful women and violent conflicts resulting from injustice.

Sheikh al-Amin Mazrui wrote his essays of this Guidance (Uwongozi) collection in Mombasa between 1930 and 1932, providing social critique and moral guidance to Kenya’s coastal Muslims during a period of their decline during British colonial rule. The essays were initially published as a series of double-sided pamphlets called Sahifa (The Page), the first Swahili Islamic newspaper. Inspired by contemporary debates of Pan-Islam and Islamic modernism, and with a critical eye on British colonialism, this leading East African modernist takes issue with his peers, in a sharply critical and yet often humorous tone. Al-Amin Mazrui was the first to publish Islamic educational prose and social commentary in Swahili. This bi-lingual edition makes fascinating reading for specialists and general readers.

First appearing as a series of letters to a local newspaper, “The Life Story of Me, Segilola” caused a sensation in Lagos in the late 1920s. The lifelike autobiography of a repentant courtesan, it regaled the reader with risqué escapades, pious moralising and vivid evocations of urban popular culture. The narrative and the commentary that sprang up around it in the Yoruba press offer a unique view of life in colonial Lagos. Today it is recognised as I.B.Thomas's work and hailed as the first Yoruba novel in a major African literary tradition. This volume presents the edited Yoruba text with translation, selected newspaper correspondence, and an introductory essay showing how the text emerged from the Yoruba print culture of the time.


Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel has won the Paul Hair Prize 2013!

This volume is an interpretive analysis of a collection of 335 song texts treated as primary historical sources. The collection highlights the cultural practices that link music with labor in Sukuma communities in northwestern Tanzania. These linkages are evident in the music of the elephant, snake, and porcupine hunting associations that flourished in the precolonial epoch, in the nineteenth-century regional and long-distance porter associations, and in the farmer associations that have proliferated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Acting primarily as an interpretive editor, the author collaborated with several Tanzanian scholars and translators towards fine-tuning the translation of these texts into English, and gathered testimonies in order to create succinct interpretive statements about the songs.

The African Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology is pleased to announce that the 2012 Kwabena Nketia Book Prize has been awarded to Frank Gunderson for his book, Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania: "We Never Sleep, We Dream of Farming, published by Brill in 2010. Grounded in nearly twenty years of ethnographic research, we congratulate Professor Gunderson for this excellent publication in African music studies

Henry Muoria (1914-97), self-taught journalist and pamphleteer, helped to inspire Kenya's nationalisms before Mau Mau. The pamphlets reproduced here, in Gikuyu and English, contrast his own originality with the conservatism of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first President. The contributing editors introduce Muoria's political context, tell how three remarkable women sustained his families' life; and remember him as father. Courageous intellectual, political, and domestic life here intertwine.

Ce tome présente le Ta:rikh Mandinka, un manuscrit rédigé en Arabe et en Mandinka, originaire du village de Bijini en Guinée-Bissau. Inédit jusqu’à présent, le manuscrit consiste en une compilation structurée et très originale sur le Kaabu, réunissant divers récits et chroniques focalisant les débuts mythiques et la chute de cet « empire » païen au milieu du 19ième siècle.
Deux versions du manuscrit et plusieurs interprétations (lectures) du Ta:rikh sont reproduites, transcrites, traduites et analysées en tenant compte de questions philologiques, historiques et anthropologiques. L'analyse regarde la communauté cléricale de Bijini en tant que lieu de transmission de savoirs dans un contexte local et régional.
Le point focal du livre est l’importance de la diaspora cléricale des Mandinka et Jaakanka (Jakhanké) dans le processus de la construction de l’histoire de l’ « empire » sòoninkee du Kaabu en Sénégambie. Le tome contient un glossaire des noms et des termes mentionnés par les sources, des illustrations, des tableaux, des cartes et des photographies.

This volume presents a hitherto unpublished manuscript written in Arabic and Mandinka from the muslim village of Bijini in Guinea-Bissau, the Ta:rikh Mandinka, a unique and structured compilation unfolding the pagan "empire" of Kaabu from it's mythical beginnings to it's downfall in the nineteenth-century. Two existing manuscript versions and several oral interpretations of the Ta:rikh are reproduced, transcribed, translated, compared and analysed considering philological, historical and social-anthropological issues (chaps. 1-3). The fourth chapter deals with the clerical community of Bijini as a place of knowledge-transfer in it's local setting and within regional networks.
The focus of the book is on the importance of the Mandinka and Jakhanka clerical diaspora in the making of the history of the Sooninkee "empire" of Kaabu in Senegambia. The volume contains a glossary of names and terms mentioned in the sources and is illustrated with maps, photographs and drawings.