KÚGHAH — KÁGHÓ — KAÚKAÚ — KARKAR.

Kúghah is said by El Bekrí to have been fifteen days from Ghánah; and if to this scanty information be added the statements of El Idrísí, that it stood on the Nile or Great River, and was nine days east of Samaḳanda, which was four days distant from Ghánah towards the south or south-east, it will be apparent that Kúghah was the place otherwise named Kághó. It was, of all the cities of the Blacks, that which furnished the largest quantity of gold,—the very remark made of Gago (Kághó) by Leo Africanus.[170] When Cadamosto relates that, of the gold collected in Melli (Málí), part was sent to Oden (Waddán), part to Tombutto (Tomboktú), and the remainder to “a place called Cochia, which is the road to Syria and Cairo,” it is manifest that he meant to speak of Kághó under the name of Kúghah.[171] But it has been shown that Kághó was also called Kaúkaú. It is therefore clearly ascertained that one place—the most important in Negroland—bore three different names,—viz. Kúgháh, Kaúkaú, and Kághó, of which the last alone was proper to it; the first two also designating, or appearing to designate, other places. But it is worth while to inquire more closely into the confusion arising from this frequent use of equivalent and equivocal names.

El Bekrí does not speak quite so concisely of Kaúkaú as of Kúghah: he enters a little into detail respecting the former place; he says that it was nine days from Tádmekkah, which was situate fifty days eastward from Ghánah, and forty from Ghodémis. Tádmekkah was evidently a Berber town, in the desert, while Kaúkaú was considered as belonging to Negroland; yet if we suppose Kaúkaú to have been south of Tádmekkah, or forty-nine days from Ghodémis, and little more than fifty from Ghánah, still it could not, within nine days of Tádmekkah, have been in Negroland properly so called, but only on its frontiers towards the desert. Indeed, it may be inferred from El Bekrí’s words, that its inhabitants were of Berber rather than of Negro origin. They were called by the Arabs, he says, Baẓarkáyín; they dressed like the Blacks, they worshipped idols like the Blacks, but their king was a Mohammedan. They always threw the remains of the King’s dinner into the Nile,—an expression on which but little stress can be laid. El Bekrí, in tracing the course of the Great River eastwards from Ghánah, states that fourteen days below the latter place, it entered the territory of the Seghmárah; and “opposite to the Seghmárah,” he adds, “on the other side of the river, is Kaúkaú.” Now the Seghmárah also occupied the country north of Tádmekkah; they possessed therefore, or roved over, a desert exceeding a month’s journey in extent. In so wide a compass, it conduces little to accuracy to learn that Kaúkaú stood opposite to them; and as to the river, it may have been the theoretical stream uniting the Nile of Ghánah with that of Egypt. It is plain enough that Kaúkaú, nine days from Tádmekkah, was a very different place from Kúghah on the Great River, fifteen days below Ghánah; but since Kúghah was also called Kaúkaú, it is not quite clear that El Bekrí has not confounded in some degree those two places, and ascribed to the one the characteristics of the other.[172]

In El Idrísí’s accounts of Kúghah and Kaúkaú, there is nothing so remarkable as his tone of uncertainty and the doubts uttered by him. Thus he says of Kúghah, that “it stands on the northern bank of the Nile, the waters of which are drunk by its inhabitants. It belongs to Wanghárah, but some of the Blacks place it in Kánem.” Again, he tells us that “Kaúkaú is the most celebrated city of Negroland: it is large, and stands on the banks of a river flowing through it from the north. But many of the Blacks affirm that this city is built on the sides of a canal; others say, on a river running into the Nile; but the more probable opinion is, that the river of Kaúkaú has a course of many days before it reaches that city, and is afterwards lost in the sands.”[173] Doubts of this kind respecting the most important and celebrated cities of Negroland may be more naturally ascribed to ambiguity of information, than to actual want of it. Kúghah on the Great River below Ghánah, may have been confounded with Kaúghah adjoining Bornú, and thus transferred eastwards into the vicinity of Kánem. The celebrity of Kúghah (called also Kaúkaú) may have lent a semblance of importance to some place in the desert bearing apparently the latter name, and the physical geography of which was but little known.

Respecting the position of this Kaúkaú of the desert, our information is far from being satisfactory; yet it all points towards the desert fronting Houssa, or between that country and Aghades. East of Ghánah, and behind the Merásah, El Idrísí places the nomade tribe of the Beghámah. Between the Beghámah and the Azḳár who passed the summer on Ṭanṭanah, the range of hills bounding Fezzán on the south, was a distance of twenty days. Now from Kúghah to Kaúkaú, he tells us, was a journey of twenty days going northwards through the country of the Beghámah. It was the natural consequence of a system which arranged the frontier of Negroland in an undeviating straight line from west to east, to suppose that a route from Negroland to the desert went northwards: but, stripped of such inference, El Idrisí’s statement amounts to this,—that Kaúkaú was twenty days distant from Kúghah, not in Negroland, but in the desert. Again, when speaking of Ṭanṭanah and the Azḳár, he says, “further south are Kaúkaú and the Demdem;” and then repeating the various opinions current respecting the river of Kaúkaú, he adds, “the country contiguous to this territory (Kaúkaú) on the east, is chiefly that of Kawwár, well known and much frequented.” The well-known country of Kawwár lies half-way between Fezzán and Bornú, westward of which situation, and consequently in the desert, we must look for Kaúkaú. Obscure as these indications are in many respects, they are conclusive in showing that Kaúkaú, according to the Arab author’s conception, was in the desert, between Kúghah and Kawwár, Ṭanṭanah and the country of the Demdem.[174]

Ibn Sʿaíd, who wrote in the latter half of the thirteenth century, or above a century later than El Idrísí, after stating that Kánem is the greatest kingdom of Negroland, that it has Fezzán on the north, and that it is the head of Bornú, adds, that it has on the west Kaúkaú, Baghárah or Taghárah, Tekrúr, &c. He says also, that “from Tádmekkah to Kaúkaú are ten stages, from Kaúkaú to Ghánah twenty; then follows the Ocean.” The reduced distance here allowed between Tádmekkah and Ghánah, may have arisen from confounding the Kaúkaú of the desert with the city of the same name (called also Kúghah and Kághó) on the Great River. But on one point Ibn Sʿaíd speaks clearly, namely, that Kaúkaú was not comprised in the kingdom of Kánem, which then included Bornú and part of the desert, but lay further west, between Tádmekkah and Ghánah.

Numerous as are the Arab writers of Geographical Treatises and Dictionaries, it is vain to seek in their pages for any information on so obscure a point as the position of Kaúkaú. They all copy preceding writers literally, particularly El Idrísí; and on opening their volumes, we are almost sure of reading, that “Kaúkaú stands on a river of the same name, coming from the north, and afterwards sinking in the sands of the desert, though some say,” &c. Yet they present one striking variance; many, if not even a large majority of them write, not Kaúkaú, but Karkar. It may be said, indeed, that in Arabic writing, Kaúkaú is easily changed into Karkar, and that the latter name is probably only a clerical corruption of the former.[175] But can it be shown à priori that there could not have been a city or country named Karkar? and is not the readiness to suppose the corruption of Kaúkaú into Karkar, itself the result of a prejudice founded on the celebrity of the former of these names, and which was likely at all times to prompt copiers and compilers to a corruption of an opposite kind, namely, that of Karkar into Kaúkaú? Of two names resembling each other, the more famous and better known may be well presumed to have had the benefit of all doubts in the process of transcription; while on the other hand, if there were actually two important places named Kaúkaú in Negroland, it is inconceivable that Arab travellers visiting that region should have never called attention to so remarkable an instance of homonymy; nay, that Arab Geographers should never have even suspected the existence of two places of that name, but should have uniformly endeavoured to draw to a single point the double image before their eyes. The manifest double use of the name Kaúkaú; the remarkable absence of all direct testimony as to the existence of two places of that name; and the various readings of geographers compiling from the same authorities, being maturely considered, it is impossible to avoid concluding, that there actually were not two places named Kaúkaú, but that there was in the desert a tract called Karkar, which Arab authors easily transformed into Kaúkaú. They separated this well-known name from the names Kúghah and Kághó, with which it had no apparent relationship, and set it on Karkar, wherewith it almost naturally coincided.[176]

But is there any direct and positive evidence, it will be asked, of the existence of a place or territory named Karkar? Yes, we reply, there is direct evidence to that effect, sufficient to confirm the authority of the numerous Arab geographers who write Karkar instead of Kaúkaú. Ibn Baṭúṭah informs us that the Desert of Káhir, eastward of Tekaddá, belonged to the Karkarí Sultan.[177] There is here no possibility of confusion; Kaúkaú, which that traveller had visited, was included in the empire of Málí; and Tekaddá, an independent state, stood between that place and Káhir, depending on the Karkarí. But Káhir had ʿAhír, the desert of the Tawárik, on the north and east; Tekaddá on the west; and southwards it extended—as we learn from Leo, who calls it Ghír—to the frontiers of Guber: in this latter direction, then, we may naturally look for the head quarters of the Karkarí.

A modern writer, who has collected much, but not always distinct information relating to the interior of Africa, after mentioning the Kadarko (probably the Kotú-n-kúra) and the Shaderbah (the river of Kábi), adds,—“some of these rivers open a communication with a tribe of heathens named Gargari, who live in tents, and are not black, but a red-skinned people, yet they are not of the Arabian stock. The best breeds of horses and mules come from these parts.”[178] This is evidently a description of a Berber tribe, whose loose observance of the Mohammedan rites has caused them to be mistaken for pagans. They reared their horses and mules in the desert, and visited the high countries of Kachenah, Zamfarah, and Gúber, whence the rivers alluded to descend. Clapperton found the Tawárik near Kachenah to be in possession of a remarkably fine breed of horses. The same traveller learned that, five days south of Katagum there is an independent people named Kurrikurry, probably a colony of the Karkari who have fixed themselves on the eastern slopes of the hills of Baúshi.[179] In a route from Kanó to Tomboktú, described by an intelligent native of the former place, the following names occur in succession:—Berni-Kachenah (Berni means city), Berni-Gurgar, Zamfarah, Ulumdar, Mallay, Galefaty and Asben. Ulumdar is the name of one of the Arab tribes frequenting Houssa; Mallay means a town belonging to the indigenous population, or the Mallawa; Galefaty (Kiliwatí, in the Houssa language Kiliwawa) is the town of the Kiliwah, a Berber tribe; and Berni-Gurgar, on the frontier between Kachenah and Zamfarah, is probably the chief place of the Karkarí.[180]

The obscurity and indistinctness which hung over the most important place in Negroland being thus removed, there still remains the inquiry, whether Kúghah, Kaúkaú, or Kághó, still exists and flourishes; has it mouldered to decay, or does it still retain the pre-eminence which we know it to have held during at least six centuries? These questions, in the present state of our information, cannot be answered with perfect confidence. The brief journal of Amadi Fatouma, the only survivor of Park’s second expedition, seems to contain no mention of Kághó. But without the original of that journal, how can a critic decide peremptorily as to its contents? Is there nothing to awaken suspicion in the published translation of that journal; or is it not possible, nay even probable, that the name there read Kaffo was really Kághó?[181] Bowdich says, that the places passed on the river below Tomboktú are Uzzalin, Googara, Koolmanna, Gauw, &c. The last-named place is in Marra; Koolmanna is probably the Gourmon of Amadi Fatouma, in the kingdom of Ghurma; and Googara is Kúghah, the burr of the letter ghain being represented by an r.[182] Mohammed Másíní, in his description of the Kowára, places on its banks, ten days below Tomboktú, a city named Ghagró, which name, as we have neither the original document, nor an explanation of the translator’s mode of representing the Arabic letters, we feel justified in supposing to be intended for Kághó.[183] Finally, in an account of the travels of an Egyptian-Arab, procured by Major Laing, are the following words:—“To the westward, between Houssa (Kachenah) and Yawoori [this is an indication of direction by the traveller in Núfí] is situated on the Niger, a town of immense magnitude and importance, called Kuku (Kaúkaú), of the power of which surrounding tribes stand in much awe.” These allusions, taken together, seem to warrant the conclusion that Kúghah, Kághó, or Kaúkaú still exists and flourishes.[184]

The argument urged above to show that Kaúkaú is often written for Karkar may be thus briefly stated: Kaúkaú is described by Arab geographers with impossible conditions, the analysis of which shows that either there were two places named Kaúkaú, or two places not so named indeed, but of which the written names were so much alike, that, in nine cases out of ten, they would be both read Kaúkaú; and this is the preferable opinion. Having thus decided that the eastern Kaúkaú, or rather Karkar—as it shall be called hereafter for the sake of avoiding ambiguity—was the territory extending from the vicinity of the modern Aghades, to the frontiers of Gúber and Kachenah, we must now give a little attention to its river. Enough is known of Negroland in that quarter, to render it certain that a river described in such doubtful language, must belong to the desert. Streams flow southward from the mountains of Muḳsim near Aghades, and one of these was probably the river of Karkar.[185] Passing through this place, it turns westward (or rather south-westward), and then, according to some accounts, it winds towards the desert (or northward), and is lost in the sands. But some say that it joins the Nile (the Great River, or Kowára); and as the country north-west of the Quorrama is described as being well watered, and having rivers flowing through it to the Kowára, the river of Karkar may be assumed with probability to be one of them.[186]