za of Gao

Who he is

Title

za or zuwa (king) of Kawkaw (Gao); malik in the Arabic epitaphs

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

not pinned: the Za (Zuwa) line, or the house of the Saney epitaphs that claimed descent from one Zaghi, or both merged

Confidence

low

Kings attested by dated epitaphs at Saney: Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Zaghi (died 1100), Abu Bakr (died 1110), Umar (died 1120), names taken from the Prophet and the first caliphs (Moraes Farias); a Muhammad ibn al-Gum'a (OCR reading of the UNESCO plate; died May 1103) and Hawa, daughter of Muhammad (died about 1140), are also commemorated. After 1140 no royal name survives until the Mali period. Al-Sa'di's undated Zuwa list puts 1200, by a mere generation count, somewhere around its 23rd to 27th names; not a basis for naming anyone.

What it holds

• Kawkaw (Gao Ancien): palace, mosque, market, the royal court
• the royal cemetery at Saney
• Kukiya (near Bentiya): the dynasty's ancestral town and island
• the Niger from the Tosaye narrows to the Fafa rapids, with its islands and floodlands (the drawn core)
• dues on the caravan trade and the market at Gao

How it was acquired

By inheritance in a dynasty of the ninth to eleventh centuries at least (see the realm record). How the Za line and the house of the Saney epitaphs relate is disputed (Lange: a new royal clan, perhaps Almoravid-inspired Berbers or kin of the Wagadu kings; Hunwick: Sanhaja incomers absorbed by the Za).

Allies and rivals

Trading partner of Tadmekka and of the Ibadi merchants of Ouargla; neighbour of the Berber herders of the Tilemsi and of the self-governing Songhay villages. No recorded ally or enemy for 1199-1200.

How things stand that morning

Holds the drawn river core in person through the court at Gao; Kukiya is a royal town with no separate lord attested. Beyond the core, the Songhay villages and the Gourma peoples are not shown to pay him anything.

Wealth

Caravan and market dues; gold, slaves and ivory northward, salt, copper, cloth, beads and horses southward; tribute in kind from river villages (not attested in detail).

Military

Cavalry and camel-riders (al-Idrisi); Sorko boats. No fortress known.

Threats

• Berber herders of the north bank (no war recorded)
• rival royal lines (inferred)
• the drift of the caravan trade to other roads

Wives and children

Not known. Royal women held the title malika: a queen's epitaph of 1119 and Hawa's of about 1140.

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. 1200No dated event is recorded.

Places of note

• Gao Ancien palace and mosque: The king's residence.
• Saney royal cemetery: Epitaphs of 1100-1140.
• Kukiya: Ancestral town and island.

Where the sources disagree

• UNESCO GHA IV's plate captions (OCR) give stela no. 11 as Muhammad b. al-Gum'a, died 15 May 1103, and stela no. 14 as Hawa, daughter of Muhammad, died about 1 May 1140; the readings and exact days should be checked against Moraes Farias (2003).

Evidence: Royal epitaphs to 1140, al-Idrisi (1154); no name for 1200.

On the map: A corridor convention; see the realm record.

Primary sources for Gao (Kawkaw)

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
• Medieval Arabic inscriptions of the Niger bend and the Adrar (dated epitaphs from 1013 (Essuk) and 1100 (Gao-Saney) onward). The only writing from the Sudan belt itself before the Timbuktu chronicles.
• The Book of Geography, Ibn Said al-Maghribi (Ali ibn Musa ibn Said) (about 1250 to 1275). Written two generations after 1200 but drawing on the travels of Ibn Fatima, a merchant who had been in the Sudan, Ibn Said gives the first clear picture of Kanem as an empire: the mai Dunama Dibalemi (reigned about 1210 to 1248), his capital Njimi, his Muslim subjects and his reach to the Fezzan, Tajuwa and the Zaghawa, with the Sao and other peoples on his borders. Read online
• Dictionary of Countries: the entries on Africa, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1224 to 1228, at Mosul and Aleppo). Entries written within a generation of 1200 from earlier books and from informants: Maqdishu (Mogadishu), described as a town of the Barbar (Somali) on the edge of the Zanj country with no single ruler but elders for each group, the earliest notice of the town; Manbasa (Mombasa), Lanjuya (Zanzibar) and the Zanj coast; Zayla, Barbara and the Dahlak islands; Dunqula (Dongola) and the Nubians; the Beja; Kanem, Zaghawa, Ghana, Kawkaw and the Sudan, mostly from al-Bakri and al-Idrisi; and the towns of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Read online
• The Book of Examination of the Wonders of the Cities (1191). The nearest geographical survey to 1200: a description of the Almohad lands written nine years earlier, town by town, from Alexandria and Barqa through Tripoli, Gabès, Mahdia, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, Fez, Marrakesh and Sijilmasa, with a section on the Sahara routes and the Sudan (Ghana, Zafun, Kawkaw). Read online
• The Book of Routes and Realms: the Description of North Africa, al-Bakri (Abu Ubayd Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Bakri) (1068, at Cordoba). Old by 1200 but still the standard description of the Sahara and the Sudan that the Almohad-period writers copied: Ghana under Tunka Manin with its twin towns and its Muslim quarter, Awdaghust, Tadmakka, Kawkaw, Takrur and Sila, the gold trade and the routes from Sijilmasa and the Dar'a; the Ibadi towns of the Jarid and the Fezzan; the Berber peoples of the Maghreb. Read online
• The Pleasure of One who Longs to Cross the Horizons (the Book of Roger), al-Idrisi (Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi) (completed in 1154 at Palermo, for Roger II of Sicily). The fullest geography of Africa a generation before 1200: the Maghreb and Ifriqiya town by town with distances and products; the Sahara routes through Sijilmasa, Awdaghust, Ghadames and Zawila; the Sudan with Ghana, Takrur, Sila, Barisa, Kawkaw (Gao) and Kugha, and Kanem with its towns Manan and Njimi; Nubia and Dongola, the Beja and the Red Sea ports; Zeila and Berbera; and the Zanj coast with Malindi, Mombasa, Qanbalu and Sofala with its gold, the earliest systematic notice of the Swahili towns. Read online

2 more in the sources library for West Africa: the Sudan and Guinea.