Page 22 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 20

History

described Timbuktu as the Paris of Etiquette and Protocol. With these were many specimens of
the mediaeval world, on account of Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.”
its intellectual culture. According 51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of
to Professor Henry Louis Gates, Benin was built to “a scale compara- 54. In the mid-nineteenth century,
25,000 university students studied ble with the Great Wall of China”. William Clarke, an English visitor to
there. There was a vast system of defen- Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an
sive walling totalling 10,000 miles in article of cloth can be woven by the
47. Many old West African families all. Even before the full extent of Yoruba weavers as by any people . .
have private library collections that the city walling had become appar- . in durability, their cloths far excel
go back hundreds of years. The ent the Guinness Book of Records the prints and home-spuns of Man-
Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and carried an entry in the 1974 edition chester.”
Oudane have a total of 3,450 hand that described the city as: “The larg-
written mediaeval books. There may est earthworks in the world carried 55. The recently discovered 9th
be another 6,000 books still surviv- out prior to the mechanical era.” century Nigerian city of Eredo was
ing in the other city of Walata. Some found to be surrounded by a wall
date back to the 8th century AD. 52. Benin art of the Middle Ages that was 100 miles long and seventy
There are 11,000 books in private was of the highest quality. An offi- feet high in places. The internal area
collections in Niger. Finally, in Tim- cial of the Berlin Museum für Völk- was a staggering 400 square miles.
buktu, Mali, there are about 700,000 erkunde once stated that: “These
surviving books. works from Benin are equal to the 56. On the subject of cloth, Kongo-
very finest examples of European lese textiles were also distinguished.
48. A collection of one thousand casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini Various European writers of the
six hundred books was considered could not have cast them better, nor sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
a small library for a West African could anyone else before or after wrote of the delicate crafts of the
scholar of the 16th century. Profes- him . . . Technically, these bronzes peoples living in eastern Kongo and
sor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu is represent the very highest possible adjacent regions who manufactured
recorded as saying that he had the achievement.” damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta,
smallest library of any of his friends cloth of tissue and velvet.
– he had only 1600 volumes. 53. Winwood Reade described his
visit to the Ashanti Royal Palace Professor DeGraft-Johnson made
49. Concerning these old manu- of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the curious observation that: “Their
scripts, Michael Palin, in his TV the king’s palace, which consists of brocades, both high and low, were
series Sahara, said the imam of many courtyards, each surrounded far more valuable than the Italian.”
Timbuktu “has a collection of with alcoves and verandahs, and
scientific texts that clearly show the having two gates or doors, so that 57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the
planets circling the sun. They date each yard was a thoroughfare . . . Middle Ages, one modern scholar
back hundreds of years . . . Its con- But the part of the palace front- wrote that: “There is no doubting . .
vincing evidence that the scholars ing the street was a stone house, . the existence of an expert met-
of Timbuktu knew a lot more than Moorish in its style . . . with a flat allurgical art in the ancient Kongo
their counterparts in Europe. In roof and a parapet, and suites of . . . The Bakongo were aware of
the fifteenth century in Timbuktu apartments on the first floor. It was the toxicity of lead vapours. They
the mathematicians knew about the built by Fanti masons many years devised preventative and curative
rotation of the planets, knew about ago. The rooms upstairs remind methods, both pharmacological
the details of the eclipse, they knew me of Wardour Street. Each was a (massive doses of pawpaw and palm
things which we had to wait for 150 perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books oil) and mechanical (exerting of
almost 200 years to know in Europe in many languages, Bohemian glass, pressure to free the digestive tract),
when Galileo and Copernicus came clocks, silver plate, old furniture, for combating lead poisoning.”
up with these same calculations and Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets,
were given a very hard time for it.” pictures and engravings, numberless 58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in
chests and coffers. A sword bearing the city of Kano dates back to the
50. The Songhai Empire of 16th the inscription From Queen Victoria fifteenth century. Begun by Muham-
century West Africa had a govern- to the King of Ashantee. A copy mad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has
ment position called Minister for of the Times, 17 October 1843. gradually evolved over generations

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