Fact and Fiction in an Account of Sub-Saharan Africa

The Muslim traveler Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Andalusī al-Gharnātī (ca. 1080–1170) was born in Spain but left in his twenties, never to return. He visited numerous Muslim-controlled regions of the world, such as North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Central Asia. It is unknown if he actually visited sub-Saharan Africa. Regardless, he preserves much information that was circulating about sub-Saharan Africa, but he embellishes it with legends and writings from previous authors, including the Greeks.

The inhabited earth has an extent of one hundred years’ travelling of which fourteen belong to the various peoples of the Sūdān. Their country lies next to the Upper West (al-Maghrib al-A‘lā), which adjoins Ṭanja, stretching along the Sea of Darkness4 (Baḥr al Ẓulumāt).

It is said that kings of five of their tribes have adopted Islam. The nearest of them is Ghāna, where gold of extraordinary [purity] (al-dhahab al-tibr al-ghāya) grows in the sand, and is in abundance. Merchants carry to them on camels blocks of rock salt. They set out from a town called Sijilmāsa, at the farthest end of the Upper West. They travel over sands like seas, led by guides who direct themselves over the wastes according to the stars and the mountains. They carry supplies for six months with them. When they arrive in Ghāna, they sell the salt at one weight for one weight of gold, or sometimes they sell it at one weight for two weights or more, according to whether traders are many or few.

The people of Ghāna, of all the Sūdān, have the best way of living, are the best looking, and have the least crinkled hair. They possess intelligence and understanding, and they go on the Pilgrimage to Mecca. As for the Fāwah (var. Qitāwa), the Qūqū, the Malī, the Takrūr and the Ghadāmis,5 they are brave people but there are no blessings in their lands, nor anything good, nor do they possess religion or intelligence. The worst of them are the Qūqū, who have short necks, flattened noses, and red eyes. Their hair is like peppercorns, and their smell is abominable, resembling burnt horn. They shoot arrows poisoned with the blood of yellow snakes. Within one hour the flesh begins to fall off the bones of anyone struck with such an arrow, be it elephant or any other animal. For these people vipers and all other kinds of snakes are like fish, which they eat, paying no attention to the venom of the vipers and serpents, with the exception of the yellow snake which is found in their country. This they fear, and take its blood for their arrows. Their bows, which I have seen in the Maghrib, are short and so are their arrows. I saw that their bows have strings made from the fibres of a tree that grows in their country. Their arrows are short, each one span in length, and have points made of tree thorns as strong as iron, which they fasten to their arrows with the fibres of a tree. [When shooting] they [can] hit the pupil of the eye. They are the worst kind of the Sūdān. The other Sūdān are useful as slaves and laborers, but not the Qūqū, who have no good qualities, except in war. They possess small wooden tablets, with holes partly drilled through them, on which they whistle, and produce strange tones, thus causing all sorts of snakes, vipers and serpents to come out. Then they take these reptiles and eat them. Some of them tie these snakes round their middles as one ties a cummerbund, others use a long serpent in the guise of a turban, and enter the market, while nobody pays attention [to them]. Then they take off their clothes and throw upon people various serpents and vipers. People give them something to go away, for otherwise they would throw some of these snakes into their shops.

Various kinds of goatskins dyed in a marvellous manner are exported from the land of the Sūdān, each skin being tough, thick and pliant, and in a pleasing color from violet to black. One skin may weigh twenty mann. They are used to make boots for kings. They do not let the water through, nor do they damage easily or perish, despite their pliability and softness and their pleasant smell. One such skin is sold for ten dinars. The thread with which the shoe is sown perishes, but the leather does not, nor does it crack. It may be washed in a bath of hot water, and again becomes as new. The owner may have inherited it from his grandfather through his father. It is one of the marvels of the world.

In the country of these people lives an animal called lamṭ, resembling a big bull. It has horns like spears, stretching along its back, and growing as long as its body. If it strikes an animal with them, the latter is killed instantly. It has a broad neck, and from its hide shields called al-daraq al-lamṭiyya are made, called after the animal. The shields are three cubits long, light and pliable, and cannot be pierced by an arrow, nor does a sword make any impression on them. They are white like paper, and they are one of the best kinds of shield, being flat like a flat cake of bread, and cover the knight and his horse.

In the land of the Sūdān exist people without heads. They are mentioned by al-Sha‘bī in his book Siyar al-Mulūk [Rules for Kings]. It is also said that in the deserts of the Maghrib there are a people of the progeny of Adam, consisting solely of women. There are no men among them, nor does any of the male sex live in that land. These women enter a certain water by which they become pregnant. Each woman gives birth to a girl, never to a boy. Tubba‘ Dhū ’l-Manār arrived in their country when he was trying to reach the Darkness (al-ẓulumāt), which Dhū ’l-Qarnayn had entered. God knows best. And [it is also said] that his son, Ifrīqisūn b. Tubba‘ Dhū ’l-Manār was the one who founded the town of Ifrīqiya, and called it after himself. And that his father, Tubba‘, reached Wādī al-Sabt (the River of Saturday), which is a river in the Maghrib, where sands flow like flood-water, and no living being may enter it without perishing. When he reached there, he hastened back. As for Dhū ’l-Qarnayn, on his arrival there he stayed until the day of Saturday, when the flow of the sand stopped, and then he crossed it, and marched until he reached the Darkness. This is what is said, but God knows best. These headless people have eyes in their shoulders, and mouths in their chests. They form many nations, and are numerous like beasts. They reproduce and do not harm anyone, and they have no intelligence. God knows best.

N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds., J. F. P. Hopkins, trans., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 132–134.

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