Upper Senegal and Niger, Vol. 2

III. — The Judeo-Syrian hegemony (4th to 8th centuries).

In relating the first exodus of the Judeo-Syrians from Cyrenaica, we followed them across the Aïr to the Massina, where we left them, toward the beginning of the 2nd century A.D., under the command of Kara, a descendant of Israel, and of Gama, a descendant of the Syrian Souleïmân (1). When, toward the year 150 of our era, the Judeo-Syrians originating from this exodus left the Massina to go to the Aoukar, their chiefs still belonged to the two same families; that of Kara had the preeminence and the memory of it has been preserved to our days by certain Peul fractions, among whom the nobles bear the modernized name of Karanké or Kananké (those of Kara or Kana) (2). Kara—or his successor—settled at Ghana, near a Soninke village which no doubt had already existed for a certain time under another name, and was the chief of the first Judeo-Syrian colony to arrive in the Aoukar. When, some fifty years later, the second exodus came, via the Touat route, to join the first, the new arrivals obtained from the descendant of Kara the authorization to pitch their tents in the region and also recognized his authority. But this latter likely did not yet extend to the Soninke, the original masters of the country. It was hardly, it seems, until one hundred years after the arrival of the immigration originating from the Touat that the Judeo-Syrians, who had to a certain extent adopted sedentary habits and made Ghana a true city, became the effective masters of the country. It is therefore toward the year 300 that it is appropriate to place the foundation properly so-called of the empire of Ghana and the beginning of the Judeo-Syrian imperial dynasty issued from Kara.

This dynasty kept the power, most probably, until the end of the 8th century. It is it which provided those forty

(1) Vol. 1, page 215.
(2) It is for this reason no doubt that the ancestor Kara is called sometimes Karaké or Karanké in the Peul and Soninke traditions.