The Chronicles of Two West African Kingdoms

The Tarikh Ibn Al-Mukhtar of the Songhay Empire and the Tarikh Al-Fattash of the Caliphate of Hamdallahi

Nobili, Mauro
Wright, Zachary
Diakité, Ali

The Chronicles of Two West African Kingdoms presents a new reading of West African history from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Based on close analysis of Arabic manuscripts from Timbuktu and other regions, this volume provides key historical context from the Songhay Empire through the Caliphate of Hamdallahi, along with translations and Arabic editions of the long-obscured Tarikh Ibn al-Mukhtar in parallel with the later production known as the Tarikh al-fattash. The central observation that emerges from these texts is that Muslim scholars in premodern West Africa, who saw themselves as constitutive to the powerful kingdoms in the Western Sudan, claimed almost unprecedented authority to shape reality through narration.