The Bulala Sultan of Fitri

Whilst recently perusing a book on Chad, we saw the Bulala sultan of Fitri in Les treize préfectures de la République du Chad by Pierre Gentil (1962). Although we could not find his name in the pamphlet, we wonder if it is Oumar since the book was published in the 1960s. Or perhaps Hassan Absekin who became sultan in 1967 according to Hagenbucher. 

Wild Rice and Lake Chad

Whilst taking another look at Koelle's English-Kanuri dictionary, we noticed a reference to wild rice growing near Lake Chad. According to Koelle, who likely derived this information from Ali Eisami, the region around Dikwa (Digoa) was especially known for the wild rice growing there. This brought to mind al-Umari's description of Kanem from the 14th century (included in Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History). According to an informant who knew an ascetic shaykh named Uthman al-Kanimi, related to the Sayfawa, rice grew without seed in Kanem. Perhaps this early 14th century reference is to the region specifically near Lake Chad, or what Eisami referred to as Pérgi, the region in Borno to the south/southwest of the Lake. 

Agisymba and the Ngizim?

Whilst continuing our early forays into the Teda, Daza and Kanuri languages, we randomly wondered if Agisymba was perhaps a reference to the Ngizim. Lange and others have mentioned this, although Murray Last made the point more explicit through reference to the Teda and Daza languages. If the Garamantes referred to the distant land of Agisymba by a name heard from people speaking an early form of the Teda language (possible due to the Tibetsi region likely being in contact with the Garamantes in some form), it is plausible for the Ngizim to have been the ethnonym in question. Basically, the addition of -ba at the end of word would have meant "people of" (as in the -bu in Kanembu, although modern Kanuri seems to use -wu). So Agisymba would have meant A (perhaps the -ng initial sound was difficult to render in the Berber and Greek languages) + ngisym + -ba. 

This theory, of course, assumes the continuity of the "Ngizim" name for 2000 years, so it is highly speculative. To our knowledge, the earliest written source referring to the Ngizim dates to the 16th century. When a French source mentions them at the end of the 17th, they were referred to as "Enghzeum." If oral traditions east of Lake Chad and clan affiliations are anything to go by, the Nguedjem (or Ngizim) were also once living in what is today Chad, in Kanem (and as part of the Bulala sultanate in Fitri, perhaps contributing to Carbou's confusion about their origins). While some ethnonyms in the Lake Chad region have persisted for several centuries (Kuri, for instance, or Bade), Ngizim would have to had survived as a name for over a thousand years before its attestation in the 1500s and 1600s. 

Naturally, one would also have to account for Ptolemy's description of Agisymba seeming to imply it was near mountains. Was this meant to refer to an area closer to Air? Tibetsi? Assuming the Garamantes would have traveled south through Kawar and reached the Lake Chad area, the land of Agisymba with rhinoceroses and mountains (nearby?) had to have been to the east or west without necessarily traveling too far. The Air massif to the west is an intriguing idea, but presumably the ancestors of the Teda and Daza may have known the region in or near Kanem more intimately if they approached it from the Tibetsi and Borku regions. Again, if one assumes the Garamantes were in contact with peoples who spoke a language like that of the Teda and Daza since the days of Herodotus, and the latter groups likely knew of Kanem or Lake Chad, it is possible the presumably Berber-speaking Garamantes adopted words for southern peoples acquired through them. 

Ultimately, the Agisymba as Ngizim remains just a theory. For it to be true requires one to make a number of unproven assumptions that the current data do not fully support. We assume that ancient peoples who spoke an early form of the Teda, Daza, and Kanuri languages in the central Sahara or Tibetsi were referring to a group as something like Ngizim nearly 2000 years ago. Then, through their contacts with the Garamantes, the latter referred to the Ngizim in a way that was later recorded in ancient sources as Agisymba. If the Ngizim and Bade (Bedde) were perhaps both living near Lake Chad in antiquity, then the name Agisymba could be a deformation of something like Ngizimba, referring to a region near Lake Chad, probably Kanem. One must also assume the Ngijem in Kanem are related to the Ngizim west of the lake, even though traditions in the late 1800s and early colonial period connected them to the Bulala.

KAKRH and Early Kanem

al-Ya'qubi's description of Kanem translated in the Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (edited by Levtzion and Hopkins).

One thing we have been reconsidering is the claim by  Abdelkérim Souleyman Tério about the name of a Kanem ruler written down in the 9th century. In his Origine et évolution des Zaghawa: Du royaume du Kanem aux Etats modernes (VIIIe-XXIe siècle), the author suggests that the name of the Kanem ruler is actually a title. He then proposes the notion that it is etymologically linked to the modern Zaghawa word for king (kireh in Blench's Beria dictionary). If one reads the name recorded by al-Ya'qubi as a title and perhaps Kakira as the best fit, this does bear some resemblance with the Zaghawa word for king. Interestingly, Blench's dictionary suggests that the Zaghawa word for king is rooted in the word for elder, or old age. This is likely related to the Kanuri word for elder, kura. According to Cyffer's dictionary, this word can be used to mean "age" or "big" or related concepts with the use of Kanuri prefixes. Unlike the Beria or Zaghawa language, however, Kanuri does not use the word kura for a chief or king today. Indeed, decades ago Lavers expressed some skepticism about reading the name recorded by al-Ya'qubi as related to the word for elder or great. 

What is perhaps surprising about this is the Teda language using distinct words for the same concept. According to one Tudaga dictionary, the word for old is gibi. This seems to be related to the word for a chief or leader, bugidi (chief or old man). Carbou provided similar information in his work, too. According to Carbou, the word for grand/aged is bo, elder or chef is bougoudi. If Kanuri is more closely related to the Teda and Daza languages than it is to Zaghawa, it is intriguing that Kanuri uses words like kura instead of cognates of the Teda/Daza languages. Indeed, the word in Tudaga bears some resemblance to the Daju word for chief, a language from a distinct branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. Apparently, the Daju word for chief in more than one dialect is buge, so it would be interesting to note if it was based on a word for elder or seniority. In the Barma language of Bagirmi, from a different branch of the Nilo-Saharan family than the Saharan languages of Kanuri, the word for old is bon/o. An old man is gada and a chief is kadal (though the higher status bang or mbang for the ruler of Bagirmi is well-known). In addition, Barma and related Nilo-Saharan languages use ngare or similar words for chief or ruler.

It nonetheless seems likely that Kanuri and the Beria language inherited words of deep antiquity in Nilo-Saharan languages related to age, seniority and great, if one accepts Blench's theories on Nilo-Saharan linguistics. If, however, an early form of kura was used to name early rulers of pre-Islamic Kanem, one still has to explain the k- added to it. Instead, we could be looking at the Kanuri prefix ker- or kə̀r(kura) as in the modern word kermai? But, that seems to be prohibited by the rules of Kanuri grammar which would use nemkura to make the word a noun. Alternatively, it may be following the ki- prefix in Beria identified by Blench as a pronoun. But this may be contradicted by the use of the prefix nem- to form words like bigness in modern Kanuri. It does not seem common to add the k- prefix to the word kura in the Kanuri language (although an archaic form of the language might have done so, perhaps like the Beria kî? or the addition of the initial k- to anem to specify the Kanem region).

Ultimately, the theory that the KAKRH is derived from the Zaghawa word for king (or, alternatively, the Kanuri word kura) remains highly problematic. Perhaps something like kurabe would match older, more senior, as that form may have meant something akin to "the great." Since al-Ya'qubi was writing down what was a word in a language he didn't speak over 1000 years ago, this is necessarily speculative. And as total novices in the study of the Kanuri language, our speculations on this should be seen as purely exploratory.

Writing the Qur'an in Borno

 

Although we have definitely watched this documentary before, we found it fascinating upon our second viewing. Entitled "Borno calligraphy - Creating hand-written Qur'an in northeast Nigeria" and featuring Goni Aminami, Malam Tahir Abba, and Dmitry Bondarev, the scribe explains the process of writing by hand a Qur'an in Borno.

Le christianisme éthiopien

We enjoyed this recent talk with Marie-Laure Derat and Martina Ambu on Ethiopian Christianity. Quite interesting. 

Kandakma and 'an.d.k.ma?

The title of Dunama, the man who killed Kaday b. Dunama (Augustin Holl, The Diwan Revisited: Literacy, State Formation and the Rise of Kanuri Domination (AD 1200-1600)). 

Something we have been reconsidering whilst re-reading parts of the Diwan is the dignitary who murdered Kaday b. Dunama (in c.1277, according to Lange's reckoning). As he indicated in his footnotes, the Arabic text suggests that the man who killed the mai, named Dunama, held a title or perhaps was a dignitary in the Sayfawa court. Lange, however, did not venture speculating on what the title may have been, yet his French translation rendered it as the above.

H.R. Palmer, in his Bornu Sahara and Sudan, endeavored to identify the title. According to Palmer, who did not explain his reasoning, it was a "Dikuma" who was supposedly the chief of the N'Galma Diku (N'Galma Duku). Using evidence from the gargams, Palmer also believed that Kaday (or, Kadai) was killed at Zui Zui in Borku. 

Muhammad Nur Alkali was apparently influenced by Palmer's thinking here for he raised the possibility of Zuwi Zuwi being an oasis known as Zau Kura along the Kawar-Tripoli trade route. Thus, he rendered the title in the Diwan as "Ndikuma." This is more reminiscent of the Dirkuma of the Tura and difficult to reconcile with Palmer's claim the title was held by the chief of the N'Galma Duku. 

As for Heinrich Barth, he wrote the title as ʿAndákama. Barth's reading is close to Lange's. Here is how the Arabic text looks for this part of the Diwan on page 38 in Lange:

Lange wisely avoided a guess at the possible meaning or origin of the title. We, however, wonder if this obscure title or official disappeared in the Sayfawa court but survived among the Bulala sultans in Kanem (and later, Fitri). Our evidence is slim, but Hagenbucher's study of the Bilala of Fitri found a title called kandakma. Described as the premier adjoint of the galadima, the title was occupied by the N'guidjim. Part of the Birni dignitaries of the sultanate, they were on the "left" of the court. Among the Birni or "people of the left" were the N'Guidjim, Kassawa, Gaswa, Madawa, Fadawa, Kiliti, and Argumba. Since many of these titles appear to be of Kanembu/Kanuri origin, and the Bulala sultanate in Kanem likely borrowed many titles from the Sayfawa court, we wonder if the kandakma is another borrowing. Even if we are correct, we cannot automatically assume the office meant the same thing given the vast chronological distance between 13th century Kanem and 20th century Fitri.

Another obstacle is explaining the absence of the initial k in the Diwan. One wonders if what occurred here is a case in which the prefix was not included by the copyist of the Diwan through an error or differences between spoken forms of Kanuri in medieval versus more recent times? Assuming the Bulala spoke Kanembu during the centuries their sultanate controlled Kanem,  and the adoption of a Naba or Kuka-related language began after their exodus to the Fitri region, one might expect kandakma to be closer to an early Kanuri/Kanembu pronunciation of the word. Alternatively, there may be no connection whatsoever between the Bulala kandakma and the 'an.d.k.ma in the Diwan. But if the two words are indeed linked, which seems plausible, then the dignitary who killed Kaday b. Dunama in c. 1277 may have been someone who served the galadima and was close to the court. This, of course, assumes the deep antiquity of the title galadima and the post possibly being connected to the N'guidjim of Kanem (according to Carbou, the chief of the N'guidjim in Kanem was called galadima, although the uncertain but close ties to the Bulala may mean one cannot assume continuity from the earlier Sayfawa period in Kanem).

Another one of our incredibly speculative thoughts on this title is a possible link to a word in Kanuri, kə́ndə́gái, which the English–Kanuri dictionary (by Norbert Cyffer) gives for a reception room in a palace. Hutchison's study of Kanuri word formation analyzes kə̀ndə́gái ("royal reception room") and kə̀ndə́gà ("living") as derived from the verb dəgá, "live." If the Diwan's ʿan.d.k.ma and the Fitri kandakma reflect a form like kəndəg(a)-ma, the consonants k-n-d-g-m would account for the whole skeleton. The formation has a close parallel. Cigama (cikama), the Kanuri "gatekeeper" or chamberlain, from ciga, "town gate," plus -ma, so an office named after a part of the palace is exactly the kind of title that could explain the kandakma. We must stress that kəndəgama is not attested, that Lange has claimed control of audiences to the Cikama and correspondence and visitors to the Digma. If the link holds, the kandakma would be a palace-household officer attached to the reception room, with the kind of access that could explain how he reached Kaday.

Ultimately, our theory remains a tentative one. Clearly, Lange himself did not propose this in his study of the Diwan, and to our knowledge, the title has not been clearly elucidated or identified. The -ma suffix and the structure of the sentence suggest a title, and the overlap with the kandakma of the Bulala sultanate in Fitri is rather striking.  As for what the function of the 'an.d.k.ma may have been, it was perhaps a title for a first deputy of the galadima who may have been a "first minister" and thus close associate of the mai who advised the ruler. This is purely speculative, but one wonders if the word galadima is etymologically linked to an Old Kanembu word for advise (galā in Bondarev's dictionary of Old Kanembu). The kandakma Dunama was thus someone who was likely closely entwined in court affairs and possibly related to Kaday. Since Kaday's successor was his brother Bir, it is not inconceivable that 'an.d.k.ma Dunama was acting on behalf of Bir's faction.