King of Jenne

Who he is

Name

Konboro or a predecessor (not pinned); Konboro converts to Islam towards the end of the sixth century AH (about 1180-1204)

Title

Sultan of Jenne (later Jenne-koi)

Since

Not pinned

Born

Not known

Family

Not known

Confidence

low

Ta'rikh al-Sudan, trans. Houdas, pp. 23-25.

What it holds

• Djenne and its palace
• Old Jenne (Djenne-jeno)
• The Pondori floodplain villages
• Daily markets and river tolls

Allies and rivals

The Muslim clerics of Dia and of the town; the pagan party at court; the Bozo and Nono villages.

How things stand that morning

Reigning; the court is about to turn, or has just turned, Muslim.

Wealth

Rice, fish, markets, river trade in salt, grain and gold.

Military

Not known; the floods.

Threats

• Opposition to conversion
• Bad floods

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. About 1180-1204, not pinnedConversion of Konboro and the building of the first mosque on the palace site.Depends on: Konboro reigning. Stopped by: A pagan reaction.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: A seventeenth-century chronicle.

On the map: Approximate.

Primary sources for Jenne

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Sudan, Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi (about 1655, at Timbuktu). The Timbuktu tradition on the middle Niger four and a half centuries later, and the only narrative there is: the Za (Zuwa) kings of Gao and Kukiya, whose fifteenth king Za Kusoy is said to have accepted Islam in 1010 and whose successors ruled at Gao through the twelfth century; the foundation of Jenne and the conversion of its king Kunburu with his people towards the end of the sixth century of the Hijra, that is about 1200, with Jenne's early trade; and the position of Mali and Ghana as al-Sadi understood it. Read online
• The Chronicle of the Researcher, Ibn al-Mukhtar (attributed to Mahmud Kati); rewritten by Nuh ibn al-Tahir (about 1665, rewritten about 1830 to 1845). Later than the Tarikh al-Sudan and far less reliable: a seventeenth-century Timbuktu chronicle rewritten in the nineteenth century to serve the Masina caliphate, with insertions. Read online
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Various (edited by N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins) (ninth to sixteenth centuries; the collection published 1981). The standard English collection of every Arabic passage on the western and central Sudan.