Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa, Vol. 3 (of 5)

APPENDIX III.

• Lawán Háji, the chief of the Ámjegé, who had his residence in Ámdagé.
• Fúgo Dermán (ʿAbd e’ Rahmán), from Bainge.
• Fúgo Ádigé, from Mʿalemrí, one of the villages belonging to the district Wolóje.
• Fúgo Ínus (Yúnes), from Malewá.
• Fúgo Dermán, from Wólamsáy.
• Fúgo Kóloné, chief of the Sárají, from Yelówenni.
• Mai Ashé, chief of the Mʿayin, from Áshegrí.
• Fúgo Pálama, from Pálamarí.
• Fúgo Hamma, from Mágariyá.
• Máfoníma, from Máfoní.
• Fúgo Mohammed, from Aisárem.
• Fúgo Kóre, from Keríngur.
• Lawán Hámed, from Karawáru.
• Lawán Mohammed, from Góbewó.
• Fúgo Ádam, from Kajé.
• Lawán Slímán, from Slímán.
• Mai Kálama, from Kála.
• Fúgo Hámed (generally called Ábú Dáúd) the chief of the Kohálema, from Kúmbedá, to the north of Yédi.[99]
• Sheikh Sále, from Molút, with about 100 horse.
• Sheikh Tauru, from Ngomáti.
• Fúgo Bádawe, son of Háj Beshír, with a few horses.

(b.) Kanúri, free men and slaves.

Kanúri:—Light cavalry 4181, say 4500, as many small detachments are omitted; heavy cavalry 472, say 500.

Shúwa:—About 8000.

APPENDIX IV.

In the south-eastern part: Golónderá, Dégemé, Sígge, Bágeám, Bílle, Hóya, Hánnené, Wáza, Lábané, Gurfáy on the river, Chidé, Njéggere, Sigé, Últseme, Sílim, Kábe ’lmadhé or the Western Kábe, Báge, a place rich in ivory; Jínna, the largest town of the little kingdom after the capital, and important on account of the quantity of ivory there brought to market, and of the fine mat-work there produced[101]; Kalásimó, one day west from Jínna; Kábe demá or ngólo, the “large Kábe” forming the frontier-town towards Búgomán,—the frontier itself being formed by a swamp called Kénkang,—Sú, Úmsa, Madeágo, Túmbalá, the largest place beyond the river, that is to say, the river of Logón or the Lagham; Mélé, to be distinguished from the place of the same name situated on the east side of the Shárí; Fuljí; Kuljí, with a governor who is almost independent; Fóngol and Mére, both on the river; Gófa, Diyá, Ngúltsemí, Wainálle, Jemádo, Wódeó, a large place; Ngóso, residence of a governor.

APPENDIX V.

APPENDIX VI.

Wóda, the son of Yáme, belonging to the tribe of the Gémir[102], who at that time were settled in Shendy, and had embraced Islamism, had emigrated with his countrymen into the regions which afterwards, in honour of him it is said, were comprised under the name of Wádáy; and here he is reported to have exercised considerable authority in the empire of the Týnjur. His grandson, ʿAbd el Kerím, is said to have been governor of certain provinces of the empire of Dáúd, who at that time ruled the empire of the Týnjur, though he had already felt the mighty hand of his eastern neighbour Slímán, the first Mohammedan king of Dár Fúr.

Instigated by a religious feeling, this man is said to have spent several years in Bídderi, a place about ten miles to the east of the capital of the kingdom of Bagírmi, which at that time, however, does not seem to have existed; for Bídderi was one of the places in that region where people belonging to the widely-spread nation of the Fúlbe had settled from early times, and among them a family which, by means of undisputed sanctity and learning, had begun to exercise a considerable influence in the introduction of Islamism, upon a wide circumference of the surrounding provinces; and the head of this family, whose name was Mohammed, is said to have inspired ʿAbd el Kerím, the grandson of Wóda, as well as his companions Amálek, chief of the Márfa, settled in Hóggené, Múmin the Masaláti, Dédebam the Ábú-Sharibáye, and Wúwel-Banán the Jellábi, with the idea of overthrowing the pagan dominion of the Týnjur, and of founding in its stead a new kingdom based on Islamism.

Having returned to his country, and spread his ideas of independence, ʿAbd el Kerím, after some years, rose against his liege lord, Dáúd, and making Mádabá, a mountainous place situated about ten miles to the north of the later town of Wára, his residence, succeeded, after a desperate struggle, in laying the foundation of the kingdom of Wádáy, as he called the country, in honour of his grandfather. He is said to have died after a long reign, leaving as his successor his son Kharút, whom we may call Kharút the First. This is the king who founded Wára, and made this place, which is defended by natural ramparts (a circumstance which gave rise to its name, meaning “the town encircled by hills”) his residence. He, too, is said to have reigned several years, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Kharíf, who was not so fortunate as his father and grandfather, but, in the third year of his reign, was killed by the warlike tribe of the Táma, whom he endeavoured to subjugate.

The successor of Kharíf was Yakúb ʿArús, his younger brother, who felt himself strong enough to undertake an expedition into the interior of Dár Fúr, where, on account of the advanced age of its king, Músa, the son and successor of Slimán, the illustrious founder of that Mohammedan kingdom, he may have expected little resistance; but he was beaten, and obliged to make a speedy retreat. This prince was succeeded by his son Kharút II., who, during a reign of forty years, is said to have established greater tranquillity and happiness than were to be expected in a kingdom composed of such heterogeneous elements.

The son of this king was Jóda or Jáude, with the surname Kharíf e’ Tímán, but better known under his honorary title, Mohammed Suláy or Sulé (meaning the deliverer)—a title which was given to him by his subjects in consequence of the victory by which he saved his country from the yoke of the Furáwy, who under the command of Ábú ’l Kásem, the second son of Áhmed-Bókkor, and the sixth Mohammedan king of that country, had overrun Wádáy with a powerful army, in order to make it tributary. It is from this victorious king, who has made Wádáy honoured and respected by its neighbours, that the country has received its other name, viz. Dár Suláy. It is likewise this king, who at the close of his reign wrested Kánem from the hands of the sultan of Bórnu, or at least the better part of it, by conquering Mandó or Mondó, the town of the Týnjur, as well as Mʿawó, the residence of a khalífa, invested by the sultan of Bórnu; and this is the commencement of the hostilities which are carried on between Bórnu and Wádáy. Mohammed-Suláy is said to have reigned, like his father, forty years. To him succeeded his son Sáleh, with the surname Dérret, who has been almost unanimously represented to me as a bad sort of prince, although this seems to be owing to the circumstance of his having put to death a considerable number of ʿulama, a class of men who, in Wádáy, enjoy great authority. This king hastened his death by giving offence to the mother of his eldest son ʿAbd el Kerím, who belonged to the tribe of the Málánga; for, instigated by her, it is said, her son ʿAbd el Kerím took the field against his father, while the latter, in the eighth year of his reign, had marched with an army against the Mádalá, the inhabitants of a place close to Mádabá, and not far from the seats of the Málánga, and after a sanguinary battle the son succeeded in vanquishing his father, who was killed in the year 1805. These are well-known facts, which cannot be denied.

ʿAbd el Kerím, better known under his surname Sabún, which he received at a later time, mounted the throne of Wádáy, stained with the blood of his father, and began a reign which all agree in representing as one of the wisest ever known in this part of the world.

First, he enriched himself and his country by the spoil of Bagírmi, whose inhabitants were much further advanced in civilization than their eastern neighbours; and by their predatory expeditions to Dirki, had amassed a great deal of riches, consisting not only of fine clothes, and merján or coral, but even of silver, of which ʿAbd el Kerím is said by trustworthy persons to have carried away with him five camel-loads, being equal to about fifteen hundred pounds’ weight. It was also during his reign, as I have stated before, that Bagírmi became for ever a tributary province of Wádáy. Having then founded a powerful kingdom, it formed the chief object of his exertions to establish a direct communication with the ports on the coast of the Mediterranean, in order to supply himself with those manufactures which, before the spoil of Bagírmi, had been almost unknown to the people of Wádáy.

But to the account of the exertions of ʿAbd-el-Kerím in this field, such as has been given by the late M. Fresnel, in his memoir on Wádáy, I have nothing to add, as it no doubt formed the chief subject of his inquiries; but the account given by that gentleman of the king’s death, and of the reign of his successor, is full of errors. ʿAbd el Kerím Sabún died in the tenth year of his reign, which falls in the year 1815, in a place close to Wára, called Júnne, where he had collected an army, in order, as I have been assured by well-informed persons, to make war upon the ruler of Bórnu, or rather on the sheikh Mohammed el Kánemí; who, endeavouring to restore his adopted country Kánem to its former splendour, was anxious to rescue it from the hands of Wádáy.

Sabún died so suddenly that he was unable to name his successor; but by all whom I have questioned on this point, I have been assured that the suspicion of poison is quite out of the question. Moreover, the circumstances as related by M. Fresnel are greatly misrepresented, Sabún having no son at all of the name of Seksán; for he left six sons, the eldest of whom, of the name of Ásed, was born of a mother from the tribe of the Kóndongó, while Yúsuf, the second son, and three more sons of ʿAbd el Kerím, were born of one and the same mother, who belonged to the tribe of the Mádabá. As for Jʿafar, who, on account of his long residence in Tripoli, and his numerous interesting adventures, has become well known to the English public[103], his mother belonged to another tribe.

When therefore Sabún had died, without naming his successor, the partisans of the tribe of the Mádabá arose against the Kóndongó, or the faction of Ásed; and having succeeded in vanquishing their adversaries, and slaying Ásed, they placed on the throne Yúsuf, with the surname Kharífáyín, a name which, however, is not generally known in the country. This Yúsuf, partly under the guardianship of his uncle Ábú Rokkhíyé, and partly by himself, after he had slain his uncle, together with Dómmo, the agíd of the Máhamíd, ruled for sixteen years in the most tyrannical manner over Wádáy till, about the beginning of the year 1830, he was put to death at the instigation of his own mother, whose name was Símbil. There has never ruled over Wádáy a king of the name of ʿAbd el Káder; and Major Denham was quite right when, in 1823, he called the then king of that country the immediate successor of Sabún.

Yúsuf was succeeded by his infant son Rákeb, who after seventeen or eighteen months died from the small-pox, when a man belonging to a lateral branch of the royal family, namely, ʿAbd el ʿAzíz, son of Rádama, whose father Gándigin was a younger son of Jóda Mohammed Suláy, while his mother also belonged to the royal line, ascended the throne; and being supported by the warlike tribe of the Kódoyí (called by the Arabs Bú-senún, on account of their red teeth), among whom he had taken his residence, he succeeded in maintaining his position, in an almost continuous struggle with his adversaries. The first conflict which he had to sustain was against the Kélingen, who put forth, not Jʿafar, the rightful claimant to the succession, but another pretender, named Kéde; they were, however, totally beaten, near a place in the vicinity of Wára, called Fólkotó.

ʿAbd el ʿAzíz had hardly begun to enjoy some tranquillity, when the tribe of the Kóndongó, leaving their mountain seats, marched against him; but they likewise were beaten, and almost annihilated, in a battle fought near a place called Búrtay. ʿAbd el ʿAzíz, who has been represented to me by my informants as a man of excellent qualities, and of great intelligence, died likewise of the small-pox, after a reign of five years and a half, when his infant son Ádam was placed upon the throne, but, after a little more than a year, was dethroned, and carried into honourable captivity, into Dár Fúr.

The circumstances which led to this revolution were as follows. Mohammed Sáleh, not quite correctly named e’ Sheríf, who had stealthily entered Wádáy a long time previously, but had not been able to collect a party sufficiently strong to enable him to assert his claims openly as the brother of Sabún, had at length addressed himself to Mohammed Fádhl, the king of Dár Fúr, and, under promise of a considerable tribute to be paid yearly, had induced that prince to assist him in obtaining the kingdom of Wádáy; and in the misery in which that country was just then plunged by a severe famine, it only required the assistance of two captains or ágade, viz. ʿAbd e’ Síd, and ʿAbd el Fat-ha, to conquer Wádáy, while none but the Kámkolák of the tribe of the Kodoyí made a serious resistance, though without success.

Mohammed Sáleh, who thus ascended the throne with the assistance of a foreign power, in the month Tóm el awel, in the year 1250 H., may certainly be said to have exerted himself for the benefit of his country, though the last years of his reign have been rather unfortunate, as well for himself for his subjects.

The first enterprise which he undertook in order to enrich his subjects, or perhaps himself, and with the purpose of extending his dominion, was an expedition against Kárká or Kargha, the district composed of islands and half-submerged meadow-lands and pasture-grounds in the south-east corner of the Tsád, which I have described in my account of Kánem, and from whence he carried away a great number of cattle. Perhaps, also, one reason why he undertook this expedition was the circumstance that another member of the royal family, namely, Núr e’ Dín, who by Yúsuf and Fúrba was descended directly from Sáleh Derret, had retired into that swampy and almost inaccessible district, and, owing to the influence which he obtained over the neighbouring tribes, might have risen as a pretender at a future time. The next year Mohammed Sáleh marched against the Táma, that very intractable and predatory tribe settled in a mountainous district four days N.E. from Wára, and, having conquered them and slain their chief, invested another man with his authority; but the Táma having driven this person away after the king had retraced his steps, Mohammed Sáleh was obliged to make another expedition against them the following year, when he subdued them once more, and made them acknowledge as their chief a person called Íbrahím.

After this, in the year 1846, he undertook that expedition against Bórnu, of which I have given a short account in the chronological table of the history of that empire, and which had been greatly misrepresented by M. Fresnel; for although he penetrated to the very heart of that country, he did not attain his object of reinstating the family of the sultan of Bórnu in its ancient right; and although he certainly carried away a great amount of spoil, yet he lost a considerable portion of his army, as well in the battle of Kúsuri as on his return home,—principally while crossing the Shárí.

However, on his return, the king turned his arms against the Tebu tribes settled on the Bahr el Ghazál; and, conquering them, subjected them to an annual tribute. Having returned from this memorable campaign, Mohammed Sáleh did not undertake a second expedition, but, having kept quietly at home for three or four years, was obliged to waste the strength of one part of his empire in a bloody struggle against the other.

The origin and reason of this civil war, which up to the time of my leaving Negroland kept Wádáy in rather a weakened state, is to be sought for in the real or presumed blindness of the king, which gave to his adversaries the Kodoyí, who regard Ádam as their legitimate prince, some pretext for not acknowledging him any longer as their master, besides the general unpopularity, produced by his avarice. It was on this account, in order to escape from his public and private enemies, that in the year 1850 he abandoned the old residence of all the former kings of Wádáy, down from Kharút the First, and transferred the seat of government from Wára to Abéshr, a very inconsiderable place or village, about twenty miles to the south of Wára, where, on account of its being almost entirely destitute of water, and situated in the very territory of his partisans the Kélingen, he felt himself tolerably secure.

The contest, fomented for a long time, did not break out until 1851, when in the month of Shʿabán he was obliged to march against the Kodoyí, who, assisted by part of the Ábyí or Ábú Shárib, awaited him in their mountains, from whence they rushed down upon him when he had closely approached them, on Friday the 9th of Shʿabán, with great impetuosity, and breaking through all his lines, and killing a great many persons of high rank, amongst whom was Ábú Horra, the blind aged brother of the king, and his own daughter Fátima, penetrated to his very person, and were on the point of slaying him, when his people succeeded in saving his life. But having become emboldened by this success, the enemy the next day ventured to leave their mountain fastnesses, and descended into the plain, and were in consequence overpowered by the greater numbers and the superior cavalry of the king’s host, and, after a severe loss, which however cleared rather the ranks of their companions the Ábú Shárib than their own, sought refuge in the mountains. But notwithstanding this shock, received by them in the above-mentioned battle, which by the natives is called the battle of Tórbigen or Jálkam, being a warlike race, they have by no means given up their point, and were stated during my stay in Bagírmi to persist in the intention of renewing the struggle after the labours of the harvest should be over.

So far I have brought down the history of the country in the despatch which I sent home after my return from Bagírmi; and the remarks with which I then concluded my account of the history of Wádáy have been since confirmed in a very remarkable manner. My words were: “The discord which at present prevails in the centre of Wádáy is the more considerable, as the king Mohammed Sáleh seems to be on bad terms even with his eldest son Mohammed, the heir to the throne, who, having stayed behind in Wára, and being repeatedly summoned to appear before his father, is said to have retired to the southern parts of the country.” A few months after I wrote these lines, we received the news of a civil war having broken out between the son and his father; and a long sanguinary struggle ensued, in which Mohammed, the son of Mohammed Sáleh, vanquished not only his father, but also his brothers, who were supported by strong factions, while he himself, being born of a woman who was not a native of the country, but a Fellatníye from Kordofán, had solely to rely upon his own energy and courage; and it is said that he committed great havoc amongst the principal men of the country. What the present state of the country may be I do not know; but I have been told that this king has been overthrown by one of his brothers. If Mr. Vogel, who, according to the latest accounts, has succeeded in entering this country, should be so fortunate as to escape with his life, we shall soon hear more about this interesting region.

Such is the short account of the history of Wádáy, as far as my inquiries in Bagírmi enabled me to learn it, and for the general accuracy of which I can answer, although it may be at variance with other reports. As for the character of the country, which has been thus united into one extensive kingdom, stretching in its greatest extent from W.N.W. to E.S.E., and reaching from about 15° east long., to about 23°, and from about 15° north lat. to 10° south, I shall here only give a very short view of the most characteristic features, leaving the particulars to the itineraries, as all the knowledge which we possess of the country is derived from them, and not from ocular inspection.

Wádáy Proper is rather a level country, but interspersed with a great many isolated mountains of a dry and sterile character, as it seems, without being capable of feeding constant springs of water, the only sources of whose existence in the country I have been able to obtain information, being those near the place Hámiyen, in the wadí Waringék; and even these are said to contain hot water. The whole country has an inclination from east to west—in other words, from the foot of Jebel Márra, in Dár Fúr, towards the basin of the Fittrí, the lake or lagoon of the Kúka, which receives all the moisture carried down during the rainy season by the smaller watercourses, and collected in the larger valley of the Bat-há; with the exception as it seems of the wádí Kíya, which, running from north to south, next to the above-mentioned range of mountains, is stated by most of my informants not to have any connection with that basin, and may possibly join some branch of the Nile. In the northern part, where the country is bordered by desert tracts, there are several smaller watercourses or, as they are here called, “zaraf,” which die away in the sands.

As for the country between (Lake) Fittrí and (Lake) Tsád, I have already shown it in another place to be an elevated district intercepting entirely the communication between the two lakes, or rather lagoons. The watercourses and valleys form the natural high roads, along which the dwelling-places of men are established.

With respect to the outlying provinces of the empire, which are situated towards the south, their character is evidently much more varied and rich in perrennial watercourses than the nucleus of the kingdom, but inquiries with regard to these watercourses have not as yet advanced far enough to enable us to take a general view of them.