CHAPTER ONE

Western Sudan before our era.

The history proper of the countries of the Sudan, which today constitute the civil colony of Upper Senegal-Niger, only begins at the start of our era, and even then, it is quite difficult to trace it back that far with any exactitude. Between the birth of Jesus Christ and the Hegira the Prophet Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina, marking the start of the Islamic calendar—that is to say, for the first six centuries—we have only the oral traditions of the natives to guide us, and I have already stated the little faith that one should place in them. For the ages preceding the Christian era, it is a void; I would not even dare to call it prehistory, because, in the Sudan, prehistory is only illuminated by hypotheses, without, so to speak, any materially proven fact upon which these hypotheses might find a solid foundation.

The oldest written document speaking of Western Sudan that we currently possess dates from the 10th century of our era: it is the travelogue of Ibn-Hawqal. I do not mean to say that before this date authors had not spoken of the Negroes of Western Africa; but they told us nothing about their country, which they were ignorant of, nor naturally about their history. And those who provided us with their impressions of the black race had only studied it in the person of the slaves living near them, in Europe or in the North of Africa. Such as Galen (2nd century A.D.), whose assessment of the Negroes has often been reproduced, in particular by Ibn Sa'id, and, according to the latter, by Abu al-Fida; for the famous Greek physician of