PREFACE.

The following Essay has for its object to establish the early geography of Central Africa on a solid basis. It aims at offering a clear and well-grounded explanation of the geographical descriptions of Negroland, transmitted to us by Arab writers; and, by thus connecting the past with the present, at giving an increased value to the historical information derived from the same sources. The attainment of that end will throw a steady light on the past condition of a country now awakening a general interest. It will enable us to trace some important political revolutions; to discern the nations which have stood forth politically eminent, and to estimate correctly, by means of a lengthened and authentic retrospect, the progress of civilization in Africa.

The task here undertaken has more of novelty in it than may be at first suspected. Hitherto no attempt whatever has been made to explain the Arab geography of Negroland by treating it as a whole, and as the immediate subject of investigation. Yet no department of the wide field of literature stands more in need of critical labour, or appears more justly entitled to it. The Arabs in the Middle Ages were copious and circumstantial writers, though neither profound nor exact. Geography was one of their favourite studies. The interests of trade and religious zeal led them across the deserts of Northern Africa to Negroland, of which they have left us accounts bearing in every lineament the expression of unaffected sincerity. Yet such has been the difficulty found in recognizing the places described in those accounts, that, up to this day, scarcely any addition to our positive knowledge of Negroland has been derived from the writings of the Arabs.

Ibn S’aíd, a writer of the thirteenth century, has enumerated thirteen nations of Blacks, extending across Africa, from Ghánah in the west, to the Bojá on the shores of the Red Sea in the east. Yet it is not till we arrive at the tenth of these, or Kánem, that we are able to identify satisfactorily the nomenclature of Ibn S’aíd with that of modern geography. The first nine nations towards the west, or nearly three-fourths of the whole, remain undetermined.

The Arab geography of Africa lies, at present, a large but confused heap of materials, into which modern writers occasionally dip their hands, each selecting what appears to serve his purpose, and adapting it to his views by an interpretation as narrow and partial as his mode of inquiry. Modern geographers—D’Anville and Rennell not excepted—have allowed fancied resemblances of sound to lead them far away from fact and the straight path of investigation. They have, for example, unanimously assumed the Kanó of the present day to be the Ghánah of past ages. The disorder introduced into the early geography of Central Africa by this false method of proceeding, has deprived it of all its value. It seems incapable of combining with the results of modern discovery; and instead of the harmony which ought to subsist between our present information and the ample accounts of Negroland written five or six centuries ago, we find in almost every application of the latter, the jarring consequences of false assumptions.

To give a new value to such confused materials, we must have recourse to a new and improved method of treating them.

The course here followed is, to examine the Arab authors of greatest value, and to develope, as completely as possible, the information found in them, their meaning being collected altogether from internal evidence, and without any regard to extrinsic systems. Where their statements are clear, natural, and consistent, no attempt has been made to interfere with or strain them by arbitrary conjectures. Where, on the other hand, they are obscure, absurd, or contradictory, care has been taken to inquire,—1st, What were the sources or channels of the author’s information? 2ndly, How far it must be taken in strictness, or may claim the latitude allowed to the language of ordinary discourse? 3rdly, The state of knowledge, and prevalent geographical systems in the writer’s time? 4thly, What portions may be looked upon as original or authentic, and what as founded on inference or surmise?—The point of greatest difficulty, and which demands the utmost care and perspicacity, is to distinguish between the language of experience and that of system; to separate the original information from the supplementary additions made to it, for the purpose of filling up or rounding the description, or of reconciling it with theoretical conceptions.

In all parts of the world, and in every age, the human mind moves in a constant cycle. In like stages of its progress it occupies similar positions, and goes through the same round of error. This truth is exemplified in the history of Geography, as well as in that of every other branch of human knowledge. The corrections made in our maps of Africa during the last three centuries; those made by Ptolemy in the geography of the same quarter of the globe, written by Marinus Tyrius; and those of which the great Alexandrian himself stands in need, are nearly all reducible to one common rule. The errors to which systematical geography tends, while it is not as yet founded on science, are so fully shown by experience, that we can safely derive from our knowledge of them a principle of rectification, applicable to all the materials of unscientific geography, presented to our notice, and obviously needing correction. The endeavour to trace errors according to fixed analogies, will at least lead us from mere conjecture towards a rule of reason.

The most vexatious and frequently recurring hindrance in researches of the kind here undertaken, arises from the defects of the Arabic written character, and the uncritical servility of Arab copyists and compilers. In Arabic writing, some of the characters closely resemble one another, and are distinguished only by diacritic points: the vowels likewise are chiefly indicated by points, which, like those of the former kind, are often wholly omitted. Hence it follows, that proper names, the correct reading of which cannot be inferred from the context, easily sink, when written in such ambiguous characters, from corruption to corruption, till at last they altogether cease to be recognizable. Misnomers arising in this way were perhaps often adopted in discourse, till, in process of time, they became authorized by usage. Uncertainty with respect to the true reading of proper names, besides being in itself a source of great perplexity, has the ill effect of encumbering the truth with much preliminary discussion of an apparently trivial kind. Nor are our difficulties with respect to proper names confined to the writings of the Arabs. In some parts of Africa, different races are so commingled, that five or six languages may be heard spoken within a narrow extent of territory. Travellers arriving in such a country from different quarters, and associating with different portions of the population, will naturally report in different ways the names of places. If Europeans, they variously represent, each according to the genius of his own language, articulations which, being strange to their organs, they did not invariably seize correctly. Names have been also transferred from one language to another, without due regard to the sound originally sought to be represented. Here, then, are abundant sources of confusion, which, so far, at least, as it involves the genius and construction of African languages, we are not always in a condition to clear up. Yet it is necessary, as we proceed, to endeavour to distinguish between the more and the less doubtful; and if any one should feel surprised at the attention occasionally bestowed in the following pages on proper names, let him only reflect, that the errors arising from the neglect of so many inevitable causes of variance, would at least equal what may ensue from even the least skilful discussion of them.

It would have been easy to lengthen the list of Arab authors here made use of; but little would have been gained for Geography by reference to works equally deficient in judgment and originality. The authors chiefly relied on are, El Bekrí, Ibn Khaldún, and Ibn Baṭúṭah. El Idrísí is analysed in some passages, chiefly for the sake of explaining certain discrepancies between him and the first-named writer, and to estimate the weight due to his authority. The conjectures scattered through the following pages are much fewer than the nature of the subject and the course of investigation would have permitted; but it was thought advisable to keep conjectures within bounds, even where they could not have interfered with the reasoning. Reserve and circumspection are especially necessary for an author whose conclusions differ widely from those of his precursors in the same field of inquiry, and who aims at deciding definitively questions which have long divided the judgments of the learned. Reference to the systems of recent authors has been, in general, avoided, lest the frequent recurrence of the language of refutation might give the whole an air of controversy. Pains have been also taken to abridge whatever was not strictly geographical, the object here aimed at being properly the consideration of geographical questions, the careful and satisfactory discussion of which demands a special treatise.

The mode here adopted of writing the Arabic names, is fully explained in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. VII. p. 245; but in its application will probably be found much unsteadiness and imperfection, arising partly from the want of familiarity with it, and partly from the difficulty of setting exact bounds to the employment of a foreign orthography, which jars disagreeably with the necessary reference to the orthography of our modern travellers. The attempt at a systematic reform of the mode of writing African names, has been avoided, and therewith the alternative also, of either multiplying without end the subordinate topics of discussion, or else of allowing much hypothesis to steal in under the mask of precision.

In conclusion, it may be remarked, that the attempt here made, however successful it may be deemed—and it cannot be denied that it broaches some truths, and discloses a new and logical method of treating an interesting subject—is yet but a sketch, which remains to be filled up, after a careful examination of the numerous Arabic MSS. preserved in the public libraries here and abroad, by some one better qualified for that labour, and enjoying fairer opportunities than the writer of these pages.