Wadai from a Chadian Perspective

It is always disappointing when a local scholar of an understudied precolonial African state produces mediocrity. Although Ouaddai, fondation d'un empire by Mahamat Seid Abazène Seid has the benefit of drawing on local, oral sources as well as the written literature on Wadai, it does not suffice for an overview or deep analysis of a major state in precolonial Chad Unfortunately, his frankly too brief book focuses mainly on the founder of Wadai (Abdel Kerim) and jumps all over the place chronologically to make a few generalizations about the nature of the state, its ethnic dimensions, and the administrative positions. There are some occasionally bizarre irrelevant references to Africa as the berceau of monotheism and an interpretation of Chad as both Arab and Africa. The latter position seems fair enough, and no one can deny the centuries-long presence of Arabic-speaking populations in Chad or their inclusion in the states like Wadai, Bagirmi, and Kanem-Borno. 

He seems to mostly support the idea of Abdel Kerim being of Abbasid Arab origin, but also Maba or at least spoke the language. We are also supposed to believe he married the daughter of the last Tunjur king in the region. The mix of traditions also suggest that he may have studied in Borno and Bagirmi as well as spending time in the Hijaz. His state adopted his name, and Wadai became a regional hegemon (albeit most of this seems to be in the 19th century, not the 17th or 18th centuries?). Wadai's problems with royal succession and internal dissension eventually paved the road to French colonial conquest. Nonetheless, Seid's study points to rational administration through the surveillance and rotation of officials and the non-despotic nature of the state. He rightly points out the limitations of al-Tunisi and Nachtigal, especially as the former was biased and his description of the kingdom should rightfully be seen as mainly reflecting the specific era of Saboun's reign. We also suspect Wadai to have been more in the sphere of influence of Borno until the late 18th century or early 19th. After all, Wadai's first invasion of Bagirmi supposedly occurred at the request of the mai. One also suspects the constant struggles for control of Kanem during much of the 1800s attests to Borno's continued interests in Kanem and the eastern shores of Lake Chad. 

Unfortunately, we are forced to rely on al-Tunisi, Barth, Nachtigal, and other outsiders since our surviving corpus of written sources is rather limited. The oral sources have much potential, but Seid's study is too brief and problematic to provide a proper analysis of this major Chadian kingdom (or empire). Moreover, Seid's attempt to interpret the Tarikh al-Fattash and Tarikh al-Sudan to support a Songhai connection or influence on Wadai is difficult to take seriously. Frankly, we do not know to what extent Muslims from the Songhai state were using the "Sudan Road" to reach Mecca. Moreover, the resurgent Borno kingdom as a huge state blocking Songhai from expanding east of Hausaland would suggest weak or limited Songhai influences or impact on Wadai. We find it far more likely that Wadai (and the Darfur Sultanate) owe more to Kanem-Borno and the previous Tunjur state than to any Songhai or Western Sudan societies. One also wonders if any attempt to read the prophecy of a future caliph of Takrur from Tarikh al-Fattash as predicting Wadai's rise is completely misguided. 

The Union of the Churches

Because it was co-written by Merid Wolde Aregay and frequently cited in Cohen's study of the Jesuit mission, The Question of the Union of the Churches in Luso-Ethiopian Relations, 1500-1632 was the next read on Solomonic Ethiopia. Although a short study of Luso-Ethiopian Relations and the failed unification of the respective churches under Roman authority, Aregay and Girma Beshah has written a cogent introduction to the complex topic of Portuguese-Ethiopian interactions beginning with the legend of Prester John and early contacts between the Latin West and the Horn in the late medieval period. While the authors do not seek to blame the Jesuits for the mission's failure or see in it a colonial relationship, they do acknowledge that expecting to uproot centuries-old customs and beliefs quickly was perhaps misguided. 

Ultimately, Susenyos, our Catholic negus, like Za Dengel before him, also lacked the means to effectively impose Catholicism. The dreamed for or expected Portuguese troops never arrived and resistance from the local clergy, nobility, and peasantry became too consistent and dangerous for Susenyos's rule to survive without freedom of religion. The role of peasant resistance in this process cannot be overlooked, and this essay suggests there was an aspect of class conflict expressed in the numerous revolts and rebellions. Indeed, if Za Dengel, as Crummey suggested, had hoped to win peasant support by attacking gult and building a new military base of peasant conscripts (presumably less destructive to the peasants than the older imperial military units), Susenyos alienated the peasantry with his imposition of Catholicism and the insecurity caused by frequent rebellions, Oromo raids, and banditry. 

As stated by later scholars on the Jesuits in Ethiopia, the Society of Jesus relied on the patronage of local rulers and elites. Once circumstances changed and those groups could not or would not back them, the Jesuit mission declined and often a mass support to rally it. Ethiopian Catholicism may have had that if Susenyos's brother, Sela Christos, had been able to rally forces around him and the defeated patriarch against Fasiladas. However, due to the forced conversions and general resistance to Roman Catholicism from above and below, one doubts local Catholics would have been able to stage an effective military resistance. Aregay and Beshah cite Jesuit sources suggesting over 100,000 local Catholics by 1630, but how many of these were the result of forced or coerced conversions or, perhaps like some of the conversions to Islam under Ahmad Gran, merely acts of opportunism or self-preservation in the face of a new boss or bully? One wishes Susenyos had found a way to consolidate his government and centralize the state without imposing Catholicism, perhaps a method that could have carried out some of Za Dengel's reforms with freedom of religion for Orthodox, Catholic, Muslims, Falasha, and "pagans." Ironically, his son would go on to establish a reinvigorated Solomonic dynasty that resisted the resurgence of the provincial nobility until the mid-18th century.

Histoire des Arabes sur les rives du lac Tchad

Jean-Claude Zeltner's Histoire des Arabes sur les rives du lac Tchad is one of those important works that sorely needs an updated sequel. The history of Arabs in the Chad Basin is a significant topic pertinent to the ethnographic, demographic, religious, and cultural history of our region. However, the paucity of sources for earlier periods and some of Zeltner's outmoded concepts of "Hamites" hinders this study. One would hope a modern sequel to Zeltner's research would unveil more intimate details of the relations between the state and Arab nomads in the larger region. Instead of seeing Arabs as outside the state and, until the rise of al-Kanemi and Rabeh, marginal, perhaps a new perspective could shed light on more active involvement of some groups in Kanem, Wadai, Borno, the Kotoko principalities, and Bagirmi. Something of this can be gleamed from historians of the Darfur Sultanate or Bagirmi, for example. The Arab population in Bagirmi, for instance, appear to have been one of the 3 principal ethnic groups of the kingdom. Arab relations and intermarriage with the Fulani also seems important.

Unfortunately given our few sources on the earliest penetration of Arab migrations into the Lake Chad area, Zeltner has to really begin with the late Kanem phase of the Sayfawa dynasty. We know from our Arabic sources that the earliest Arab migrations (in this case referring to nomadic or semi-nomadic populations, not Arab traders or individual immigrants coming via Egypt and North Africa) were present in the Kanem region by the late 14th century. Zeltner links them to Arab migrations to Egypt and Sudan since the early days of the Islamic conquests in the 7th century. As indicated in his magisterial history of Kanem, some of these Chadian Arabs claim descent from tribes whose history appears in the records of pre-Islamic Arabia or the early days of Islamic expansion. If Robin Law is correct, these Arabs in 14th century Kanem may have aligned themselves with the Bulala against the Sayfawa, perhaps providing horses and siding with the Bulala in raids and pillaging. It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to envision the marauding Arab tribes of the 14th century as decentralized and perhaps motivated by easy booty, but lacking deeper loyalties to the Bulala sultans.

Later, during Idris b. Ali's reconquest (or re-assertion of Bulala loyalty to the Borno sultans), Arab populations in Kanem were among those resettled to Borno. According to Zeltner, the Sayfawa dynasty did not rely on Shuwa Arabs in the way al-Kanemi or Rabeh did. Vassals of the Sayfawa, however, did accord some kind of land rights or impose tribute on Arab tribes, like their Borno overlords. Overall, in Zeltner's eyes, the Shuwa remained outside the state and subject to their own shaykhs. Although in Borno an official was appointed by the mai to oversee nomadic groups, they were largely left alone as long as they paid tribute. Perhaps to truly understand Arab populations during the Sayfawa period woudl also require historical context on the Tedas, Dazas, Koyam, Fulani, and Tuareg subject to the Sayfawa of Borno. 

With further migration of Arab tribes into Borno and other regions south of Lake Chad, they came to play a major role in supporting al-Kanemi defeat forces aligned with the jihad to the west. Some of them became key officials of the al-Kanemi dynasty, although the majority remained largely unassimilated. Another group, the Awlad Sulayman, came to play a major role in 19th century Kanem. In spite of their failure to serve the larger interests of a Bornoan reconquest of the lost territory, as effective rulers of Kanem they made the region a buffer between Wadai and Borno. Despite subsequently becoming even more integrated into Rabeh's state, Shuwa Arabs seem to have been most effectively integrated under al-Kanemi and his successors than the Sayfawa. Rabeh, on the other hand, represented something new and different in the region. Despite other scholars seeing continuity from the al-Kanemi dynasty to Rabeh's brief empire, Zeltner emphasizes how it represented a dramatic break with established tradition. Moreover, chiefs of the Arab tribes were now appointed by Rabeh's state directly. 

The rest of Zeltner's book provides a quick overview of the Arab population under French colonial rule. He essentially sees them as a population refusing the modern or new. Their refusal to embrace the modern or find effective ways to challenge it with their own internal resources ensured their marginalization under colonial rule and into the postcolonial period. Following this interpretation, Zeltner briefly summarizes the peculiarities of their vernacular Arabic, family structure, religious life, and the individual. We will have to find Chadian Arab authors or perhaps Chadian or Nigerian scholars who tackle the complex history of Arabs in this region, perhaps scholars who can shed more light on the particularities of Arab-state relations in the Central Sudan. Zeltner's work is indispensable, particularly his work on Kanem. Nonetheless, a more modern approach with comparative data on other transhumant pastoralists could shed new light on the subject. Furthermore, we find Zeltner to be too influenced by Urvoy and Lange on the allegedly "Berber" origins of the Sayfawa dynasty and his view of land tenure in Borno may require some modifications.

Jesuit Missionary Strategies in Ethiopia

Although we are still only beginning to grapple with the large body of literature on the Jesuits in Ethiopia, Cohen's Missionary Strategies of the Jesuits in Ethiopia (1555-1632) is a good overview on Jesuit strategies of evangelizing. Based on Portuguese, Jesuit, and Ethiopian sources, Cohen succeeds in demonstrating the key areas of religious, political, cultural, and theological contention and proselytization. Unlike other areas of Africa, Asia, or the Americas, the Jesuits perceived Ethiopia to be more "civilized" (like China and Japan) and an area of schismatic Christianity in need of reformation. For these reasons, the Jesuits employed sophisticated techniques of Christological debate, biblical exegesis, translation, theater, architectonics, and top-down evangelization based on the hopes of converting the emperor and nobility. The Catholic Counter-Reformation also influenced the Jesuit mission as a reformed Church sought to standardize rituals, centralize authority, and counter Protestant theological debate. 

Ethiopian Christianity's encounter with Roman Catholicism naturally led to conflict, evolution, and the discovery of shared commonalities. Jesuits, for instance, realized the Ethiopian Church drew from the same sources (the Bible, patristic literature). Both also shared a similar belief in the uses of icons and visual arts and the practice of Eucharist and baptism. Nonetheless, Ethiopian persistence in circumcision, anti-Chalcedonian perspectives, adherence to the Alexandrian See, lack of uniformity in some sacraments, observance of the Sabbath, and frequency of divorce revealed huge differences. The debate between the two Churches appears to have played a major role in fomenting Ethiopian religious literature that sought to clarify and define the tenets of the church. Some of this literature was clearly influenced by earlier Ge'ez translations of Church Fathers, and appears to have influenced subsequent internal theological debate within the Ethiopian Christian tradition. The Jesuit debate with local clergy and monks reminds us of their arguments with Buddhist priests in Japan. 

However, according to Cohen, the Jesuits did not properly prepare themselves for the centrifugal forces in Ethiopian Christianity which opposed them, particularly monastic clergy, members of the nobility, and the political crises and rebellions which forced Susenyos to restore freedom of worship. The near total conquest by Muslims in the 1500s had further fragmented the Church while ongoing Oromo expansion further weakened the authority of the Solomonic emperors. Perhaps seeing the absolutizing tendencies of the Jesuits as something that could strengthen their authority, Za Dengel and Susenyos favored the Jesuits. Unfortunately for the latter, Za Dengel's assassination and the inability of Susenyos to end revolts flight of hermits or monks, and stifle resistance to the prohibitions imposed on the Orthodox faith entailed an end of the mission when the political support from the top disappeared under the next emperor. Anyway, it looks like our next read into this topic will have to be either Caraman, the short work coauthored by Merid Wolde Aregay or the hagiography of Walatta Petros.