Abubakari II

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Abubakari II. (Actually: Abū Bakr ) is the name of a mansā (king) of the Mali Empire in West Africa , which cannot be grasped by sources . He is said to have ruled around 1310 and then abdicated to lead an expedition across the Atlantic. His brother or son is said to have been Mansā Mūsā , known in African history , who became famous through his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. The very existence of Abubakari II is disputed by leading historians specializing in Africa. On the other hand, for US “Afrocentrists” it has become the focal point of a new view of history. In their opinion, he reached America almost 200 years before Columbus and spread African culture there - or, alternatively, Islam among the indigenous people.

The Arabic sources on Abubakari II.

al-Umari

The most cited source about the alleged mansā Abubakari can be found in the chronicle of the Syrian Shihāb al-Dīn al-Umarī (1300 / 01-1349), who moved to Egypt. About 25 years after Mansa Musa's visit, he was able to interview people who had spoken to the ruler of Mali. The governor of Cairo , Ibn Amīr Hājib, asked Mansa Musa how he became king of Mali. The ruler then said:

We come from a family in which rulership is hereditary. Now my predecessor in the rule thought that it was not impossible to convince oneself of the existence of an opposing bank in the sea al-Muhit (Atlantic Ocean). Obsessed with this thought and inspired by the desire to prove its correctness, he had a few hundred vehicles fitted out, manned them and gave them just as many others with gold, mouth and water supplies in such abundance that they would need several years able to satisfy the team. During the exit he addressed the commanders as follows: “Don't come back until you have reached the extreme limit of the ocean or before your food and water supplies are exhausted.

They left and were long absent; a long time passed without anyone returning. Finally a single vehicle was found again. We asked the driver of this vehicle what had happened. He replied: “Prince, we drove for a long time, up to a moment when we encountered a violent current, like a river, on the open sea. I followed the other fleet. All the vehicles in front of me continued on their way, but as soon as one of them got there they disappeared without our being able to find out what had become of them. I didn't want to rush into the adventure of this vortex myself and therefore turned back. "

The Sultan did not want to believe the report and disapproved of the behavior. He then had 2000 ships (... equipped, half of which were meant for him and the men in his ...) company, the others for the transport of supplies and drinking water. He entrusted the government to me and set off with his companions on the sea of al-Muhit . We saw him and the others for the last time on this occasion. I remained the unlimited ruler of the empire.

It is noticeable that this anecdote, handed down from second or third hand, does not mention a name and also does not explain the relationship between this ruler and Mansa Musa. Neither do you find out details about the port or the region from where the fleets set sail. On the other hand, the numbers regarding the ships seem very improbable, unless they are to be understood more metaphorically in the sense of “very, very many”. It can be said that there is no mention of the search for a distant world at the other end of the ocean and that all the details mentioned by American and African historians and writers cannot be derived from this brief account.

Ibn Chhaldūn

In his world history, which deals in great detail with the Muslim peoples of North and West Africa, the Tunisian historian and philosopher Ibn Chaldūn (1332-1406) writes about the predecessors of Mansa Musa since the late 13th century: “The ruler after this Sākūra was Qū, grandson of the sultan Mārī Jāta (di Sundjata ), then after him his son Muhammad b. Qū. After him their kingship passed from the line of Marī Jāta to that of his brother Abu Bakr in the person of Mansā Mūsā b. Abu Bakr. ”From the passage it is clear that Abu Bakr was not ruler of Mali himself. Rather, the crown passed from Sundjata's grandson to a relative who came from the Keita royal clan, but did not count the founder of the empire as one of his direct ancestors, but rather his brother Abu Bakr. This was erroneously identified as mansā and the immediate predecessor of Mansa Musa, because the latter is said to have testified that rule in Mali passed from father to son.

Mande lore

As early as 1929 Charles Monteil (1871-1949) pointed out that Abubakari II - in contrast to Abubakari I ( Mande name: Bata Mande Bory) - is not mentioned in any oral tradition. The evaluation of the traditional chants and epics of the Mande has not produced any significantly different results to date. The from Guinea native historian Djibril Tamsir Niane thinks he can deduce his home evidence of a ruler from the epics of the "traditionalists", which it believes, maybe he could with Abubakari II. Are identified. The American historian Ivan Van Sertima, the main proponent of the theory of the pre-Columbian discovery of America by the black Africans, claimed in 1976 that he used native traditions for his reconstruction of Abubakiri's voyage, but gives - as in other contexts - no specific sources. Most recently, the Malian writer and playwright Gaoussou Diawara dealt with Abubakari and wrote a play (1992) and a biography of the ruler in 1999. He points to the fact that the Malian griots have completely ignored the ruler because, in their opinion, he was an eyesore on the history of their people. The epic chants, which focus on Abubakari, are more recent and inspired primarily by the biography written by Diawara, although formally they adhere to the classic models of the “griot” tradition.

Maurice Delafosse

The assumption that Mali was ruled by a king named Abubakari shortly after 1300 goes back to the French orientalist and West Africa expert Maurice Delafosse (1870–1926). In his three-volume work Haut-Sénégal-Niger , published in 1912, he tried for the first time to compile a complete list of the Mali kings based on the available (mostly written) sources. He also used traditional epics, which he did not consider reliable in view of the events that occurred 600 to 700 years ago. When determining the chronology, Delafosse proceeded in part arbitrarily, in order to make his system appear as coherent as possible, and set the reigns without explaining in each case how he got the dates. In his reconstruction of the story, however, he largely ignored the native, oral traditions of the Mande and largely relied on the Arabic sources, especially Ibn Chaldūn and al-Umarī. The last-mentioned chronicler reported that Mansa Musa had taken over the rule from an unnamed mansā. From this, Delafosse concluded that this must be Abū Bakr, named in the writing of Ibn Chaldūn as the father of Mansa Musa, although he is not referred to as a ruler. On the other hand, the said Abu Bakr (in the oral traditions as "Bogari" - not as "Abubakari") is said to have been a brother of the founder of the empire Sundjata , who reigned in the early 13th century, and thus Abu Bakr separates as the father of between about 1312 and 1337 ruling Mansa Musa from. Even more so, as various American authors claim, he cannot have been Mansa Musa's brother.

The French colonial historian Charles Monteil took over the list of rulers drawn up by Delafosse and did not want to fundamentally deny the existence of an Abubakari II. However, he emphasized that the name is nowhere mentioned in the oral traditions of the Mandinka, which Monteil was the first European historian to use on a large scale for his research. He considered the report on the Atlantic expedition to be "pure invention".

The Israeli orientalist and Africa historian Nehemia Levtzion (1935–2003) found when checking the original texts that the mansā Abubakari II owed its existence to a translation error . He had never ruled over Mali, which meant that at least the identification of the anonymous ruler of al-Umari as Abu Bakr, Sundjata's brother and father (more likely: grandfather) of Mansa Musa, became obsolete. Despite certain objections, the Guinean historian Madina Ly-Tall also supports Levtzion's interpretation. The question of whether the Atlantic expedition of an anonymous Mande ruler actually took place has not yet been answered.

The alleged expedition of Abubakari

Critical comments on al-Umarī's report

While one of the leading experts on Senegambia's medieval history , Raymond Mauny, denies that the West Africans had the technical and logistical prerequisites for an Atlantic voyage at the beginning of the 14th century, Jean Devisse and Sa'ad Labib do not want to rule out that at least the attempt has been made. However, they are skeptical about its success. If the Malian ships had actually succeeded in using one of the ocean currents that flow towards the Caribbean , they might have made it to America, but they would not have been able to return. However , as Gaoussou Diawara claims, for example, they could not have reached the coast of Brazil , and entry into the Amazon would have been impossible for them because of the current towards the sea. It should also be noted that the surviving captain is said to have expressly reported that the other ships were swallowed by a vortex. This suggests less of a sea current going west, but rather reminds of the medieval myth of the ship-devouring Abyss.

The story passed down by al-Umarī is not confirmed by any other source, not even in the otherwise very detailed chronicles of Timbuktu ( Tarikh al-Fettash and Tarikh al-Sudan ). A company as large as the equipping of 2,000 ships should have become known throughout the Islamic world, particularly in Egypt , which had good relations with Mali even before the rule of Mansa Musa. Even the always well-informed Ibn Chaldūn has nothing to report about this expedition. However, similar stories of rulers who intended to challenge fate were apparently already circulating in different parts of the Orient in the 13th century, so that we can also assume that al-Umarī used elements of this wandering legend to make his account appear credible .

The report at al-Umari - a parable?

It is conceivable that the anecdote was primarily didactic in nature, as the works of the Arab historians also served as a guide for the rulers. Al-Umarī possibly presented in the style of a medieval prince mirror the negative image of a ruler whom he and his successor, i.e. H. Mansa Musa, contrasted. The anonymous mansā represented, it can be assumed, a negligent king who did not bother with the business of government. Instead, he sought answers to questions that humans were not allowed to ask because they cast doubt on Allah and the authority of the Koran, which knew no land across the ocean. The ruler did not even react to the clear hint of God, who destroyed almost the entire fleet and only allowed a few survivors to return home so that they could bring the warning to the mansā rising up . But he was blind in his arrogance and challenged God by going on the expedition, putting thousands of subjects in mortal danger and thereby also reducing the resources of his empire in order to equip the fleet for the crazy enterprise.

Mansa Musa, on the other hand, humbly submitted to the instructions of the Koran scholars in Cairo and from then on acted according to their instructions. In contrast to his predecessor, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and took pious men with him to his kingdom in order to consolidate his faith there. He had mosques built in Timbuktu and Gao , generously furnished them with holy books and thus became an exemplary ruler. It is quite conceivable that al-Umarī used the still vivid memory of the pilgrim from Mali to make his didactically conceived parable as credible as possible.

The afrocentric interpretation of Abubakari II.

Regardless of the fact that the existence of a ruler Abubakari II is denied by established scientific scholarship, the leading exponents of the historical research known as "Afrocentrism" (Molefi Kente Asante, John G. Jackson, Ivan Van Sertima) declare that the king is a historical one verifiable person and reached America almost 200 years before Columbus. The Afrocentrists explain that a denial of the existence of Abubakari and his achievement of discovery amounts to a denial of the greatness of African history and - at least subliminally - fulfills the facts of "white racialism". Critics accuse the Afrocentrist in turn of manipulative handling of sources, facts and data and the use of e.g. Sometimes dubious literature as well as dogmatism and the creation of an unhistorical myth , which does not serve to research historical truth, but to cultivate Afro-American self-confidence.

The thesis that an African or Muslim ruler had reached America in the early 14th century was first put forward by the Egyptian historian Ahmed Zéki Pasha, the first modern editor of al-Umarī's writings, in 1920, the author emphasizing the importance of Arabic nautical science stressed at this company. The German overseas historian Egmont Zechlin did not want to rule out the possibility that an Arab-Malian fleet could have reached America. His colleague Richard Hennig , who specializes in pre-Columbian expeditions, examined al-Umarī's report more closely and came to the conclusion that the expedition of the ruler of Mali, if it had actually taken place, was doomed to failure. The Turkish historian of science Fuat Sezgin recently dealt with the question and, in view of the “cartographic achievements” and the “astonishingly high development of nautical science in the Arab-Islamic culture”, he can say that “Muslim seafarers” “have been around since the beginning of the 9./15. Century have not only reached the great oceanic mainland, but have even begun to map it. ”In his opinion, it was Arab and not black African explorers.

Apparently without knowledge of the report in al-Umarī, Leo Wiener (1862–1939) put forward the thesis between 1920 and 1923 in an extensive and extensively documented work that America had been colonized from the West African mandes in pre-Columbian times. Wiener relied primarily on actual or apparent similarities between Indian and African languages, but also on the occurrence of plants that were found on both sides of the Atlantic and, according to Wiener, had been introduced from Africa to the Caribbean. I.a. he tried to prove that tobacco smoking originated in Africa, which the majority of ethnologists dismissed as incorrect.

The criticisms of the predominantly white scientists were mostly negative, while an Afro-American reviewer described the results as extremely important for the reinterpretation of history and deduced from Wiener’s book that the Mandingo had at least radically reshaped, if not even created, pre-Columbian cultures .

The Malian playwright Diawara believes that Abubakari's fleet crossed the Atlantic from the Gambia and reached the Brazilian coastal area at Recife , naming it Pernambuco , in memory of the two gold-richest areas in the Mali Empire - Buré and Bambuk.

The Guinean historian Madina Ly-Tall admits that a "fruitless attempt to sail the Atlantic" may have been undertaken under the predecessor of Mansa Musa, but he emphasizes that the Senegambian provinces of the Mali Empire and the ocean, including the estuaries, are the channels of communication didn't matter. This only changed with the arrival of the Portuguese.

Afrocentric authors such as Ivan Van Sertima and Mark Hyman often point out that Columbus himself reported that he had received several reports about black people in the Caribbean, whereby it should be noted that Columbus and his contemporaries usually matched the skin color of the Indians with that of the " moros “compared. However, this meant the inhabitants of North Africa. It is also overlooked that Columbus declared unequivocally that he had not encountered any “negroes like in Guinea” in the countries he had “discovered”. The Spanish chroniclers Francisco López de Gómara and Pedro Martir d'Anghiera , who have never been to America themselves, noted in their works on the exploration and conquest of the New World that conquistadors like Vasco Núñez de Balboa saw not only isolated blacks in today's Panama . You wrote of entire settlements in which supposedly only "negros" lived. However, these are second-hand accounts, even if Van Sertima and others treat them like reliable eyewitness accounts.

Since the 1950s, the archaeologist Mervyn DW Jeffreys has championed the thesis that the Mandingo seafarers brought corn from America to West Africa as early as the early 14th century. As evidence, he refers to African myths and images of ceramics, which he classifies as medieval, and claims that corn as a staple food could not have spread so quickly in the early modern era if it was first introduced into West Africa by the Europeans after 1500 would have been. His critics state that the linguistic evidence that he provides is not conclusive and that he cannot prove whether corn or sorghum (also called “ carrots ” or “ black millet ”) is meant in an individual case .

The Islamic variant of the Abubakari myth

Since the mid-1990s, a shift in emphasis has been observed in the assessment of Abubakari's discovery achievement. While Afrocentrists had previously emphasized the influence of black African seafarers on the autochthonous cultures of Old America, Americans with a Muslim background are now emphasizing the primarily Islamic character of the discovery. While it is admitted that the continent was discovered and civilized by the Mande, emphasis is placed on the thesis that the Indians were primarily converted to Islam. The originator seems to be the physicist and Muslim functionary Youssef Mroueh, who comes from Lebanon and works in Canada. As proof of his claim, which is nowhere else to be found, he explains that Columbus even sighted a mosque in Cuba in 1492. Mroueh's claim is completely out of thin air.

The thesis that America was largely Islamic before the arrival of the Spaniards is supported by authors such as Mroueh with the claim that entire Indian tribes ( Cherokee , Blackfoot ) wore Moorish costumes, gave themselves Arabic names and founded places with clearly Islamic names (e.g. B. Tallahassee = "God will redeem you in the future"!), Left numerous Kufic inscriptions and even operated a network of Koran schools and Islamic universities (e.g. in Arizona and New Mexico ), which were later - probably by the European conquerors - had been destroyed. The Cherokee in particular are said to have been Muslims up to the 19th century, had their own imams and carried out regular pilgrimages in the style of Hajj . Sometimes there is talk of America's “Islamic legacy” without it being made clear what the purpose of this formulation is.

While the thesis of the pre-Columbian Islamization of the Native Americans is encountering increasing resistance from the organizations of the "Native Americans" (Indians), it is accepted with approval in Muslim circles and discussed with approval on appropriate web forums. This is also where the relevant texts, for example by Mroueh and Pimienta-Bey, are presented, recommended and / or linked. The "World Federation of Muslim Mission (The Minaret)" takes up Mroueh's claims uncritically and deduces from the alleged research results that the American continent was originally Islamized and that every Muslim therefore has the obligation, through his commitment to the work of conversion ( dawah ) restore this state. In November 2014, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared himself a supporter of this theory on television and agreed to build a mosque on the site mentioned by Columbus.

literature

  • Joseph M. Cuoq (ed.), Recueil des sources arabes concernant l'Afrique occidentale du VIIIe au XVIe siècle (Bilad al-Sudan). Paris 1975,
  • Maurice Delafosse, Haut-Sénégal-Niger . Paris 1912, 3 vols. (Special vol. 2)
  • Eugene R. Fingerhut, Explorers of Pre-Columbian America? The Diffusionist-Inventionist Controversy. Claremont, Cal., 1994.
  • Gaoussou Diawara, Abubakari II. Explorateur Mandingue. Paris 2012. ISBN 978-2-296-11139-4
  • Richard Hennig, Terrae incognitae: A compilation and critical evaluation of the most important pre-Columbian voyages of discovery on the basis of the original reports on them. Leiden 1938, Vol. 3: 1200 - 1515 AD: Beginning of the age of discovery. Leiden 1938, pp. 128-132.
  • Mark Hyman, Blacks Before America. New York 2003.
  • John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations. Introd. by John Henrik Clarke, Forword by Runoko Rashidi. New York 2001 (10th edition; first 1970).
  • Christopher Columbus, log book. Nachw. V. F. Gewecke. Frankfurt a. M. 1981.
  • Nehemia Levtzion, "The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings of Mali", Journal of African History 4 (1963), 341-353.
  • Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali. (Oxford Studies in African History 7) London 1975.
  • Nehemia Levtzion et al. Joseph FP Hopkins (ed.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Fontes Historiae Africananae. Series Arabica 4th Cambridge - London - New York 1981.
  • Madina Ly-Tall, Contributions à l'histoire de l'Empire du Mali 13e-16e siècle: limites, principales provinces, institutions politiques. Dakar 1977.
  • Pekka Masonen, The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages. Helsinki 2000.
  • Raymond Mauny, Les navigations médiévales sur les côtes sahariennes antérieures à la découverte portugaise. Lisbon 1960.
  • Charles Monteil, Les empires du Mali: étude d'histoire et de sociologie soudanaises. Paris 1929.
  • Djibil Tamsir Niane, Recherches sur l'Empire du Mali au Moyen-Age. Paris 1975.
  • Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America. New York 1976 (below)
  • Ivan Van Sertima, Early America Revisited. New Brunswick 2002.
  • UNESCO: General History of Africa. Vol. 4: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. V. Djibril Tamsir Niane. Los Angeles - London 1984.

Web links


Remarks

  1. ^ Translation from the French by Richard Hennig, Terrae Incognitae , Vol. 3, p. 128 f. (The part in brackets is missing in Hennig's translation and has been translated by me. - Peter Kremer) A more recent translation directly from the Arabic original can be found at Levtzion u. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources , pp. 268 f. See also Cuoq, Recueil des sources arabes , p. 274 f.
  2. ↑ Levtzion u. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arab Sources , p. 268, translate instead of “an opposite bank” on the basis of the Arabic original “my predecessor did not believe that it was impossible the furthest limit of the Atlantic Ocean”. The French orientalist J. Cuoq ( Recueil des sources arabes , p. 274) translates: "Celui qui était avant moi, ne croyait pas que l'océan Atlantique était impossible à franchir." In both translations there is no mention of an opposite coast, although it cannot be ruled out that the thought of it resonates in the formulations.
  3. ↑ Of course, it cannot be ruled out that Mansa Musa deliberately teased his Egyptian interlocutors with ludicrous stories. So he replied to the Mameluk commander-in-chief, Fakhr ad-Dīn, when he asked where all the gold comes from, with the nonsensical explanation that the precious metal grows in Sudan in the form of small rings or like carrots out of the earth. See Levtzion et al. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources , p. 250.
  4. ^ Translated from the edition by N. Levtzion et al. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources , p. 334. Another scientifically reliable translation of the original Arabic text can be found in Cuoq, Recueil des sources arabes , p. 274 f. Sākūra, known as the ruler, was a usurper who ruled from around 1285 to around 1300 and was murdered. After that, the direct descendants of the founder of the empire came to power again.
  5. ↑ See also Madina Ly Tall, "The Decline of the Mali Empire", UNESCO Vol. 4, p. 174.
  6. ↑ With the term "traditionalists" he describes the representatives of the Mande culture, who cultivate the pre-Muslim legacy in epics and songs or the traditions that emerged outside the Islamic sphere of influence and, for example, do not use the Islamic, but the traditional names of rulers, which is used to identify the named kings very difficult. See Niane, Recherches , pp. 7 ff., 15 ff. And 26-33. Cf. also Ly-Tall, L'Empire , pp. 129–141.
  7. ↑ a b Joan Baxter: Africa's “greatest explorer” . In: BBC news
  8. ↑ The fact that traditional singers punished an insignificant or despicable ruler in this way in retrospect is confirmed by specialist science. See Thomas Hale in the preface to Nouhou Malio, The Epic of Askia Mohammed. Bloomington, Ind. 1996, p. Xi.
  9. ↑ Gaoussou Diawara has made a contribution to the revival of traditional epic art in Mali and instructed a number of young poets to create songs in the style of the "griots", some with new content. A price song on Abubakarai comes from Sadio Diabaté, a "griot" of our days Audio ( RAM ; 0 kB)
  10. ↑ The establishment of the reign of Abubakari to the period from 1310 to 1312 is explained by the fact that Mansa Musa was still alive in 1337 and is said to have ruled for a total of 25 years. However, since there could only have been a very few years between the rule of Mansa Mohammed and the accession to the throne of Mansa Musa, Delafosse had no choice but to estimate Abubakari at most two years, without this being inferred from the information provided by al-Umarī.
  11. ↑ Levtzion explains the incorrect assignment by Delafosse with a translation error by Baron de Slane , who rediscovered the work of Ibn Chaldūn in the 1850s and transcribed it from an Algerian original manuscript and translated it into French. See Levtzion, "Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century King," p. 346.
  12. ↑ For the background to the discrepancies in the genealogies and possible translation errors or misinterpretations see Levtzion, "The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings", p. 346 ff.
  13. ↑ Monteil, Les empires du Mali, p. 83 f.
  14. ↑ Levtzion, “The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings”, p. 346 ff. Levtzion would like to admit, however, that Abu Bakr was the grandfather of Mansa Musa, since the term “ibn” also “grandson” or “more direct / bloodlike Descendant in the broadest sense “can mean.
  15. ↑ Ly-Tall, L'Empire , p. 138 ("Il conviendrait donc de rayer Abou Bekr II de la liste des empereurs du Mali.") And 140 f.
  16. ↑ Mauny, Les navigations médiévales, pp. 104–111, u. J. Devisse et al. S. Labib, "Africa in inter-continental relations", in, UNESCO, p. 665.
  17. ↑ See Cuoq, Recueil des sources arabes , p. 275 fn. 1.
  18. ↑ On this complex of topics see Iradj Khalifeh-Soltani, The image of the ideal ruler in the Islamic prince mirror literature, illustrated using the example of Qâbûs-Nâma . Tübingen 1971 (phil. Diss.)
  19. ↑ So al-Umarī at Levtzion a. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, pp. 267 f.
  20. ↑ In this context it is noticeable that the authors of the Chronicles of Timbuktu, Tarikh as-Soudan and Tarikh al-Fettash (16th / 17th centuries), did not also use the opportunity to contrast Mansa Musa with his neglected predecessor, as happened in the case of the Songhai rulers Sonni Ali and Askia Mohammed. Mansa Musa also received much praise from the Timbuktu chroniclers, and so it is surprising that they did not compare him to his predecessor who abandoned the kingdom entrusted by Allah. This fact can also be seen as evidence that the predecessor Mansa Musa can be seen as a fictional personality invented by al-Umarī. See also Adam Konaré Ba, Sonni Ali Ber. Études Nigériennes 40. Paris - Niamey 1977, p. 2.
  21. ^ Moli Kente Asante, The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony. New York 2007, p. 131.
  22. ↑ John G. Jackson, ( Introduction , pp. 255 ff.) And a. on esoteric books and works of speculative Atlantis research from the 19th century. See also Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. London - New York 1998, p. 249 ff., U. Fingerhut, Explorers , p. 131 ff. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the contradicting positions presented by Fingerhut.
  23. ↑ Ahmed Zéki Pacha: Une seconde tentative des Musulmans pour découvrir l'Amérique . In: Bulletin de l'Institut d'Égypte Vol. 2. 1919-20, pp. 57–59, especially p. 59.
  24. ↑ Zechlin, "The problem of the pre-Columbian discovery of America and the research on Columbus", Historical Journal 152 (1935), 1-47, spec. P. 46.
  25. ↑ Hennig, Terrae Incognitae , p. 131: “Des Sultan's journey was in every respect an attempt with completely inadequate means, a well-intentioned but, as a result of ignorance, absolutely foolhardy adventure that could not end any differently than it ended. The sultan's generous thought is worthy of recognition and is of great cultural and historical interest. "
  26. ↑ Fuat Sezgin: The discovery of the American continent by Muslim sailors before Columbus . 2006, p. 38 Online ( Memento from August 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 5.4 MB). The Berberologist and Africanist Gerhard Böhm, who teaches in Vienna, also believes he can prove that transatlantic voyages from the Canary Islands to the Gulf of Mexico have taken place since the early 14th century at the latest. In his opinion, the alleged seafarers were not black Africans, but rather light-skinned Berber nomads from the western Sahara, who also provided the basis for the Almoravid movement. See the summary of Prof. Böhm's theses in Gerald Unterberger, Die Kosmologie der Dogon. The mysticism of the heavenly support and the inverted world tree in a cultural-historical comparison. Vienna 2001, pp. 290–296.
  27. ^ Africa and the Discovery of America. (Philadelphia 1920-23), 3 vols. Wiener was a Polish-Russian emigrant, a pioneer of Esperanto and vegetarianism in the USA and taught Slavic languages at Harvard University . His son Norbert Wiener is considered the father of cybernetics .
  28. ↑ Barry Phillips in the Journal of Negro History 8 (1923), 233-238, here p. 233: “The West African Mandingoes ... at least almost entirely re-createdif they did not actually create the civilization of the Native Indians throughout the two continents ".
  29. ↑ Ly-Tall, L'Empire , p. 99: “Nous savons qu'il ya beaucoup de skepticisme autour de cette expédition, mais en l'absence de preuves, on peut supposer qu'elle a eu lieu, mais qu'elle s'est soldée par un échec. ”. See also Ders., “The Decline of the Mali Empire”, in, UNESCO, p. 174.
  30. ↑ Columbus, logbook , p. 295.
  31. ↑ See Fingerhut, Explorers , p. 137 f. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries in particular, language usage fluctuated and it is not always clear which skin color is meant when contemporary authors speak of "Africanos", "moros" or "negros". For a Spaniard at that time, a “moro ( moor )” was only slightly darker than himself and was primarily characterized by “unbelief”. For the Afrocentric authors around Ivan Van Sertima, however, the Moors were all black Africans. See the anthology The Golden Age of the Moors edited by Van Sertima . New Brunswick 1991.
  32. ↑ Jeffreys, "Maize and the Mande Myth," Current Anthropology 12 (1971), 291-320. On the other hand, see Tadeusz Lewicki , West African Food in the Middle Ages. Cambridge 1974. See also Fingerhut, Explorers , pp. 138 f.
  33. ↑ See Amir NA Muhammad, Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History (1312-2000). Beltsville 2001, p. 3. The emphasis is on "African Muslims", while the name Abubakaris is only mentioned in passing.
  34. ↑ See Youssef Mroueh: Precolumbian Muslims in the Americas . 1996 online . The complete article, which is said to have been written for a “Preparatory Committee for International Festivals to Celebrate the Millennium of the Muslims Arrival to the Americas (996–1996 CE)”, can be found on the Internet at around 20 different addresses, including: a. also in Spanish translation on the website of the “Yama'a Islámica de al-Andalus (Liga Morisca)” and T. “El Islam en América en la época precolombina”. The similarly argued article by Hisham Zoubeir: Islam in America before Columbus Online ( memento of October 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) is also widely distributed on the Internet . See also the Spanish translation under “El Islam en América antes del descubrimiento”.
  35. ↑ In the navigator's diary entries for the period mentioned (October - December 1492) only one building is described that Columbus clearly describes as an Indian place of worship. See Columbus, log book , p. 138.
  36. ↑ For his assertion that there was a system of Islamic places of worship and education, Mroueh relies on the controversial book by Barry Fell, Saga America, without specifying any specific sources . (New York 1980), which admittedly does not contain any corresponding information at all. The Adobe facilities warehouse the southwestern Indians, such as the "cliff-dwellings" of Mesa Verde , indicated Mroueh as evidence of the import of the Sudanese clay construction. A summary, from which the tendency of the theses becomes clear, can be found on the MuslimWiki: Islamic place names in America
  37. ^ Robert D. Crane: Reviving the Classical Wisdom of Islam in the Cherokee Tradition Online . The author Dr. Robert "Farooq" Dickson Crane (* 1929) holds a doctorate in law from Harvard and has acted as an advisor to President Nixon, as a member of the National Security Council and as a diplomat in the Middle East. Since converting to Islam (around 1980), he has appeared as a leading Muslim activist in the United States. Dr. Crane is co-editor of The American Muslim magazine , which was first published in 2004. Robert D. Crane
  38. ↑ This is the title of an article by José V. Pimienta-Bey that is widespread on the Internet: Muslim Legacy in Early Americas: West Africans, Moors and Amerindians Online . Pimienta belongs to the circle of Afrocentric authors influenced by Ivan Van Sertima. The addition of "Bey" to the name suggests that Pimienta belongs to the "Moorish Science Temple" of Noble Drew Ali (1886-1929), one of the oldest associations of African American Muslims. Moorish Science Temple of America (Online)
  39. ↑ For the Indian standpoint, see David A. Yeagley: So Muslims Came to America Before Columbus ?. 2004 online . For the position of the American Muslims see u. a. the MuslimWiki : Native Americans and Islam and the page "MPOD-Umma: Muslim Students' Discussion Forum (MPACUK)" used by British students with a Muslim background. Discussion on the subject of "Islam in America before Columbus" (July 2005) online ( Memento from 28 September 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  40. ↑ It is noticeable that the names of almost all authors - including Mrouehs - and also the titles of the books that are supposed to prove the Muslim presence in America before Columbus are misspelled, as if a verification of the presented "facts" should be made more difficult; see Discovery of America by Muslims ( September 28, 2007 memento in the Internet Archive )
  41. ↑ Spiegel Online: History lesson with Erdogan: "Muslims discovered America, not Columbus"
predecessor Office successor
Mohammed ibn Qu Ruler of the Mali Empire
1310–1312 		Mansa Musa
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 3, 2007 .
personal data
SURNAME Abubakari II
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abū Bakr
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of the Mali Empire in West Africa
DATE OF BIRTH 13th Century
DATE OF DEATH 14th Century