Page 76 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 13

MY AFRIKA

Mali empire came from all part of knew a lot more than their counterparts Drawings of life in Kumasi show homes,
the world. “Sergio Domian, an Italian in Europe. In the fifteenth century in often of 2 stories, square buildings with
art and architecture scholar, wrote the Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about thatched roofs, with family compounds ar-
following about this period: ‘Thus was laid the rotation of the planets, knew about ranged around a courtyard. The Manhyia
the foundation of an urban civilisation. the details of the eclipse, they knew things Palace complex drawn in another sketch
At the height of its power, Mali had at which we had to wait for 150 almost 200 was similar to a Norman castle, only more
least 400 cities, and the interior of the years to know in Europe when Galileo elegant in its architecture.
Niger Delta was very densely populated.’ and Copernicus came up with these same “These 2 story thatched homes of the
The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th calculations and were given a very hard Ashanti Kingdom were timber framed
century population of 115,000 – 5 times time for it.” and the walls were of lath and plaster
larger than mediaeval London. construction. A tree always stood in the
The old Malian capital of Niani had courtyard which was the central point of
National Geographic recently a 14th century building called the a family compound. The Tree of Life
described Timbuktu as the Paris of Hall of Audience. It was an sur- was the altar for family offerings to God,
the mediaeval world, on account of mounted by a dome, adorned with Nyame. A brass pan sat in the branches
its intellectual culture. According arabesques of striking colours. The of the tree into which offerings were placed.
to Professor Henry Louis Gates, windows of an upper floor were This was the same in every courtyard of
25,000 university students studied plated with wood and framed in every household, temple and palace. The
there. silver; those of a lower floor were King`s representatives, officials, worked in
plated with wood, framed in gold. open-sided buildings. The purpose being
“Many old West African families have Malian sailors got to America in that everyone was welcome to see what they
private library collections that go back 1311 AD, 181 years before Co- were up to.
hundreds of years. The Mauritanian cities lumbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn “The townhouses of Kumase had upstairs
of Chinguetti and Oudane have a total Fadl Al-Umari, published on this toilets in 1817.This city in the 1800s is
of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. sometime around 1342. In the tenth documented in drawings and photographs.
There may be another 6,000 books still chapter of his book, there is an ac- Promenades and public squares, cosmo-
surviving in the other city of Walata. count of two large maritime voyages politan lives, exquisite architecture and
Some date back to the 8th century AD. ordered by the predecessor of Man- everywhere spotless and ordered, a wealth
There are 11,000 books in private collec- sa Musa, a king who inherited the of architecture, history, prosperity and
tions in Niger. Malian throne in 1312. This mariner extremely modern living” – PD Lawton,
In Timbuktu today, there are about king is not named by Al-Umari, AfricanAgenda.net
700,000 surviving books. They are writ- but modern writers identify him as
ten in Mande, Suqi, Fulani, Timbuctu, Mansa Abubakari II.” Excerpt from Winwood Reade described his visit
and Sudani. The contents of the manu- Robin Walker’s book, ‘WHEN WE to the Ashanti Royal Palace of Ku-
scripts include math, medicine, poetry, law RULED’ masi in 1874: “We went to the king’s
and astronomy. The world’s first encyclo- Those event were happening at palace, which consists of many
pedia was created in Mali in the 14th the same period when Europe as a courtyards, each surrounded with
century, eons before the Europeans got the continent was plunged into the Dark alcoves and verandahs, and having
idea 4 centuries later. Age, ravaged by plague and famine, two gates or doors, so that each yard
A collection of one thousand six hundred its people killing one another for was a thoroughfare . . . But the part
books was considered a small library for a religious and ethnic reasons. of the palace fronting the street was
West African scholar of the 16th century. a stone house, Moorish in its style
Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is . . . with a flat roof and a parapet,
recorded as saying that he had the smallest and suites of apartments on the first
library of any of his friends – he had only floor. It was built by Fanti masons
1600 volumes. many years ago. The rooms upstairs
Concerning these old manuscripts, actor remind me of Wardour Street. Each
Michael Palin, in his TV series ‘Saha- was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop.
ra’, said the imam of Timbuktu “has Books in many languages, Bohemian
a collection of scientific texts that clearly glass, clocks, silver plate, old furni-
show the planets circling the sun. They date Depiction of the city of Timbuktu in the 19th century. ture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster
back hundreds of years . . . Its convincing “Kumasi was the capital of the Asante carpets, pictures and engravings,
evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu Kingdom, 10th century-20th century. numberless chests and coffers. A

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