Wangara (people)
The Wangara (other spelling Wankara and Vankara ) were the most important trading group of the West African Middle Ages. They came from the Mande region . Their most important city was Dia on a tributary of the Niger between Djenné and Timbuktu .
Long-distance trade
The Wangara became famous for their long-distance trade in gold , but also in salt, kola nuts and other goods. They were the indispensable link between the producers of the gold fields of Bure (Guinea) and Bambuk (Senegal) and the Berber and Arab Trans- Saharan traders . The exchange of goods took place in the capitals of the great West African empires Ghana , Mali and Gao . The descendants of the Wangara who are active today are the Diula traders (the term usually means all Mandekan-speaking Islamic traders, not just members of the ethnic group).
history
Andreas W. Massing considers the Wangara to be Soninke , who had lost contact with their ethnic group and their language in the diaspora and built up an identity as a caste of legal long-distance traders. It was not uncommon for wealthy traders to give their sons a full Islamic education. The mobility and erudition of the Wangara, as well as their ability to adapt to local conditions, seem to indicate that they played an important role in the spread of Islam. In the late 12th century, the expansion of their trade network probably began, from the old empire of Ghana in today's Mauritania to Senegal , Gambia and Guinea on the one hand and via Mali to the Ivory Coast and modern Ghana to Kano and Burkina Faso (in the 18th century ), Togo and Benin (no later than the 19th century) was enough. They invested in various crafts and promoted z. B. the production of pottery that was important for trade.
The Wangara literacy, a consequence of their Islamic upbringing, favored their role in long-distance trade. The Wangara also took over the merchant pacifism of Soninke-Sheikh Al-Hajj Salim Suwari, who lived in the 13th century, who taught Muslims about their responsibility as a minority in a non-Muslim environment and demanded a high level of tolerance and trust from them. This benefited the network building. Islam spread along the trade routes wherever Wangara were active. An important route was that from Banjul to the coast of modern Ghana. It later continued to northern Nigeria . The appearance of the Wangara was often associated with the transformation of small villages into Muslim trading cities. In the Empire of Ghana they were first mentioned in the 11th century by the Arab geographers al-Idrisi and Abū ʿUbaid al-Bakrī . Ibn Battuta found them in Mali in the 14th century. Several senior Wangara legal scholars were mentioned by name in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 15th century they assimilated in the Songhay Kingdom and adopted Songhay dialects, while they were known as Mande speakers in the Ghanaian Empire and adopted their language in the Hausa area .
Originally the Wangara were described as black people (like the Soninke), later as red or white, which can be traced back to a mixture with Berbers. In Mali there are still few descendants who know the tradition and genealogy of the tribe.
literature
- Levtzion, Nehemia: Ancient Ghana and Mali , London 1973.
- Lovejoy, PE: The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the 15th and 16th Centuries. In: Journal of African History, XIX (1978) 2, pp. 173-193.
- Massing, Andreas W .: The Wangara: An old Sonike diaspora in West Africa. In: Cahiers d'Études Africaines , Volume 40, Issue 158, 2000, pp. 281-308.
- Wilks, Ivor: "Wangara", Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2nd ed., Vol. XI, 2002, 137-8.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lovejoy 1978.
- ↑ Moses E. Ochonu: The Wangara Trading Network in precolonial West Africa. in: T. McNamee, M. Pearson, W. Boer (Eds.): Africans Investing in Africa: Understanding Business and Trade, Sector by Sector. Springer, 2015, p. 9 ff.
- ↑ Islam in the Medieval Sudan at www.islamawareness.net.
- ^ Massing 2000.