adminSaul Gwakuba Ndlovu
MEDIA reports say that some valuable historic scripts formerly stored in several libraries and other centres in the Malian city of Timbuktu might have been destroyed by Tuareg and Islamic rebels are most disturbing to all those interested in ancient African history.
Timbuktu has featured in the African continental commerce, social, cultural life since about the ninth or 10th century. Some scholars are of the opinion that the town’s existence predates the Christian era in that it appears to have been founded just before the beginning of the Roman Empire.
In addition to becoming a renowned city of Islamic learning, Timbuktu has been a centre of international trade long before Moslem scholars from Arabia and elsewhere on the Levant opened schools there.
Phoenicians from the Levant crossed the Mediterranean Sea by means of wind-driven boats laden with wares of various types — dates, currants, silk and perfumes — which they transferred onto camels and then crossed the vast Sahara Desert to get to Timbuktu.
In that bustling city they met many vendors of salt, ivory, hides, skins, gold ostrich feathers, dried meat, various kinds of cereals, slaves, animals such as donkeys, goats and sheep and karosses.
Those people who conducted barter trade with the Phoenicians were Bantu from such language groups as the Mossi, the Bambara, the Senufo, the Hausa and many others from that region whose major sources of life are the Niger and the Senegal rivers.
It was in that socio-economic community that Islamic scholarship established itself and spread in that region with Timbuktu as the epicentre. Inter-racial breeding inevitably occurred resulting in the birth of prominent people such as the famous Mossi warrior, Ubri.
Islamic scholars, including Yakut, Ibn Battuta, al-Bakri, al-Umari, al-Idrisi and Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wuzza’n (also known as Leo Africanus) used Timbuktu as a base to study the region’s socio-cultural life and geography.
Among most interesting pieces of research by some of those scholars is the one about the beginning of the earth. It says in the beginning there was only a living void existing in the life of what is described as the “One Being,” who called himself Maa Ngala.
Maa Ngala decided to create an egg which he called Fan. That primordial egg contained nine basic or fundamental states of existence in its nine compartments or divisions. That egg later hatched but the beings that came out of it could not speak. Maa Ngala then felt lonely and wanted someone with whom to converse.
He took a piece from each of those nine beings and mixed them and then breathed fire into the mixture and thus made a being to whom he gave a part of his own name. That being was given the power of the Word which had initially been God’s attribute alone and no-one else’s.
The word was called kuma. The traditional school where this creation story was taught was called komo. It was also responsible for performing initiation rites such as circumcision.
The process of conversation is referred to in this historic-cultural account as kuma-nyon. It is most interesting to observe that this Fulfulde traditional creation account is similar to the biblical (New Testament) version presented by St John concerning the “word.”
Another very interesting aspect of the account is the word kuma which in all Shona dialects means “bellow” like a bull or to “utter loudly” like an army commander shouting orders to his forces. We also come across the word ngala being used as God’s name in this account.
In the Kalanga language, ngala means the headgear worn by a woman when she is possessed by an ancestral spirit known as mazenge singular zenge or in old TjiKalanga, malombo.
While we can attribute those linguistic characteristics to the common origin of all Bantu languages, we cannot fail to marvel at the similar reference of the word “word” in both the Christian holy book and to the Fulfulde traditional religion.
In the same oral legend compiled by some scholars at Timbuktu at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ngala (God and people. We are told that God’s Word to his people is “divine” and the people’s Word to Him is “scared.”
Reference is also made to the use of magic, not the magic of the sorceress, but that of God’s good people in their everyday communication with their Creator.
Maa Ngala is said to have given His people three important attributes: a will, ability and knowledge.
The will makes human beings decide between good and evil, what social, cultural, economic and political path to follow, and how to relate to Maa NGala and to other people.
Ability makes it possible for people to fend for themselves. They are able to build comfortable residences, make suitable clothing, procure and cook good food, and prepare or brew healthy beverages and medicines for themselves.
Knowledge comprises one’s range of information, and or intelligence about various aspects of the world, true and justified belief as opposed to an opinion. It also means familiarity gained by experience through one or more of the five senses of the body.
It was at Timbuktu that those various scholars of yore stored their findings about knowledge whose objective is to serve mankind by properly understanding the science of animals (zoology), that of plants (botany), that of the human mind (psychology), of the heavenly bodies (theology), that about the earth (geography) and medical science. Some of those scholars wrote accounts about what they had actually seen; others compiled what they were told by people who has also in turn been told by older people. That oral tradition was highly respected in Timbuktu as well as throughout the African continent.
Among the Bambara people of Mali, oral traditionalist are called either soma or doma.In the Fulfulde language, they are known as silatigi or gando.Our traditionalist were most strongly morally bound to say the truth. To them it was unpardonable to lie. They had a saying stating how seriously they regarded the truth: it is better for the world to be cut off from you than for you to be cut off from yourself through lies.
So, the books and manuscripts stored at the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu are very important to all those who are interested in the history of Africa, in the origins of some of its cultures, its languages and indeed, even in the causes of some of the current conflicts in the Sahalean region.
l Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0735101464 or through email [email protected]
Online Reporter