Imago Mundi ISSN: 0308-5694 (Print) 1479-7801 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rimu20 The Patterns and Meaning of a Great Lake in West Africa Gerald J. Rizzo To cite this article: Gerald J. Rizzo (2006) The Patterns and Meaning of a Great Lake in West Africa, Imago Mundi, 58:1, 80-89, DOI: 10.1080/03085690500362439 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085690500362439 Published online: 05 Aug 2006. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 68 Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rimu20 The Patterns and Meaning of a Great Lake in West Africa GERALD J. RIZZO The cartographical history of Africa has often left The analysis of this database confirmed that one of much to the imagination. The idea of a great inland the most consistent features throughout the archi- lake along the Niger River in West Africa, for val record was the image of a lake in West Africa example, has had a rich tradition in written within the region of the middle Niger River.2 From accounts and on maps from Ptolemy onwards. maps on which the lake was named (which was One tendency was to dismiss the notion that any not always the case), we have identified numerous such body of water existed; another was to find toponyms, including Nigrite Palus, Nilides Palolus, divers ways of reconciling tradition and the sparse Wangara, Sigisma, Guber, Guarda, Bogs of Guarda, scattering of new ‘facts’ that reached European Maberia, Nigris Morass, Dibbie Sea, Lake Dibbie mapmakers. The fundamental problem was ignor- and Lake Debo. This analysis has led to the ance about the hydrology of the interior of Africa, conclusion that whatever the feature was called, especially in the region of the Niger River. Not until and whatever shape it was given, the mapmakers the nineteenth century was the presumed connec- were each attempting to portray a common tion between the Niger and Senegal rivers laid to physical reality. That entity was the fluctuating rest, together with the older view that the Niger area of lakes and branching streams in the middle flowed underground through the eastern highlands course of the Niger River, between Djenne´ and to the Nile. Only then was the Niger’s actual course Tombouctou known today as the Inland Niger established, flowing first east and then, after a great Delta (Fig. 1). bend, south to debouche into the Gulf of Guinea.1 The inland delta, as a unique local feature, is While the attention of historians focused mostly shown on modern maps at best as a limited area of on the African coastline and the eastern lakes, the swamp at the southern edge of the Sahara. It is early maps of West Africa had regularly showed a rarely given a name and remains mostly unnoticed prominent inland lake on the southern edge of the in the world’s view of modern Africa. Yet, the true Sahara. The cartographical history of this lake has meaning of this great wetland lies in the fact that it invited further investigation. In this paper we ask was once home to a thriving civilization centred on how did the image originate, by what physical an array of specialized urban settlements near Lake feature could it have been inspired, and why Debo, in the vicinity of modern Djenne´ (old Jenne´- should it have been considered important in the Jeno).3 For more than fifteen hundred years history of the sub-Saharan region. Jenne´-Jeno had been the focus of one of the We approached the issue by looking at four most dynamic urban agglomerations in the sub- hundred primary maps dating from 900 to 1900. Saharan interior. What the early maps reflect is c Gerald J. Rizzo is Executive Director of the Afriterra Foundation Library, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Correspondence to: G. J. Rizzo, Afriterra Foundation, 1201 5th Ave. North, #302, St Petersburg, FL 33705, USA. Tel: 727-821-2388. Fax: 727-821-6887. E-mail: ,[email protected].. Imago Mundi Vol. 58, Part 1: 80–89 # 2006 Imago Mundi Ltd ISSN 0308-5694 print/1479-7801 online DOI: 10.1080/03085690500362439 A Great Lake in West Africa 81 Fig. 1. The Inland Niger Delta, West Africa. (a) Sketch map to show the course of the Niger River in relation to the Senegal River, with which it was long thought to be joined, and the Egyptian Nile, to which in Antiquity the Niger was said to flow. (b) Detail of the area of ‘the bend’ of the Niger, showing the braided channel, marshes and lakes of the Inland Niger Delta. (Source: Times Atlas of the World, Vol. IV.) contemporary knowledge of this entity at different until the definitive modern form began to emerge times in the past. in the early eighteenth century. The depiction of a great lake in West Africa can be distilled into one of four patterns, with distinct The Ptolemaic or Dumb-bell Model map stemmata or lines of descent. Each model had The earliest record of a sub-Saharan wetland or a specific lifespan, so the classification is also lake dates from the fifth century BC, when the broadly chronological. In the literature, eight Greek historian Herodotus related how a group of specific accounts, most of which incorporate direct young Libyans crossed the Sahara to mark their African testimonies, are quoted to underlie the coming of age. They then found themselves in a different cartographical models of the lake. The first vast tract of ‘very great swamps and sundry pools’, two models had separate beginnings that came beyond which was a town whose inhabitants were together in Renaissance Venice to create a third black, and past which ‘a great river with crocodiles version that endured for some two hundred years [the Niger, or the Nile of Negroes] flowed from the 82 G. J. Rizzo 4 west towards the sunrise’. In the first century AD, and Mali, creating an impression that this river was Pliny the Elder gave a similar description of the conjoined with the Niger in a westward flow. Niger River and its lake based on information Under the influence of these Almoravids, an obtained from the Berber ruler, Juba II.5 The alternative cartographical pattern began to emerge. earliest known cartographical representation of In 1154 Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn this geographical tradition comes from Claudius Muhammed al-Sharif al-Idrisi completed his Ptolemy’s mid second-century Geography. In his Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq [The book of outline for the Fourth Map of Libya, he lists a river pleasant journeys into faraway lands], a work connecting two lakes, the Nigrite Palus in the west which probably incorporated information from and the Libya Palus to the east, thus framing the the now-lost silver planisphere that other scholars Niger in the form of a dumb-bell (Fig. 2a).6 at Roger II’s court in Palermo had created a few Although Ptolemy’s description of Africa was years earlier. In his text al-Idrisi describes an island unavailable in medieval Europe, a similar view was where gold was traded which he called Wangara, found in Paulus Orosius’s History against the Pagans. ‘300 miles long and 150 miles wide surrounded by Orosius was writing in North Africa in the early the Nil [Niger or Nile of the Negroes] on all sides fifth century, some two and a half centuries after during the whole year’ (Fig. 2b). Al-Idrisi, however, Ptolemy. He described a river called Nuhul beyond must carry the historical burden of projecting an the Atlas Mountains that ‘disappears in the sands errant westward direction for a conjoined Senegal- and after a short interval, gushes forth into an Niger River which persisted for another five enormous lake and then flows eastward’, to sink centuries.12 Nevertheless, his work proved highly 7 again before meeting the Nile. Orosius’s account, influential in disseminating the notion of a lake which was derived from the late fourth-century with islands in a braided reach of the Niger River. writer Tyconius (Commentary on the Apocalypse) and The al-Idrisi model gained currency as an in turn used by successive authorities such as alternative pattern, and during the next five Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) in his Etymologiae and centuries, Muslim, Catalan and some European Beatus of Lie´bana (d. 798) in his Commentary on the mapmakers adopted the idea for their own maps. Apocalypse, gave a wide dissemination to the idea of Although al-Idrisi’s view itself was unknown a linked pair of lakes along the course of the Niger. throughout most of the Renaissance, other links These lakes found their way onto medieval spread his version of the lake to Grenada (through, mappaemundi, notably the Anglo-Saxon (c. early for example, the writings of ibn Sa’id between eleventh century), Guidonis (Guido) of Pisa 1269 and 1286) and to North Africa (through, for (c.1119), Sawley (c.1129), Ebstorf (c.1235), and example, the work of ibn Kaldun, who was writing 8 Hereford (c.1280). This Ptolemaic-Orosian pattern in Tunis and Cairo between 1378 and 1402).13 of dumb-bell lakes persisted on many Renaissance Thence the information would have passed into world maps from the fifteenth to the sixteenth Christian European literature through the writings 9 centuries. of missionaries such as Ramon Llull (c.1272), who wrote in Catalan from Genoa, Majorca and Tunis, The al-Idrisi or ‘Braided’ Model and an anonymous Franciscan friar who left Ptolemy’s account of the geography of Africa was similar geographical accounts of Africa based on familiar to early Islamic scholars who continued to information supplied by Europeans who had study his work.