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. Names and dates for this period are traditional and unverifiable, and the Islamic emphasis is the author's, but the Gao king list can be set against the twelfth-century royal epitaphs of Gao-Saney, which partly confirm and partly contradict it.
About this source
- Title
- Tarikh al-Sudan
- Author
- Abd al-Rahman al-Sadi
- Author's dates
- 1594 to after 1656
- Written
- about 1655, at Timbuktu
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- the Songhay and their neighbours from the legendary Za kings to 1656
- Kind
- Chronicle
Hunwick's translation covers chapters 1 to 27 and 30 of Houdas's 38 and is under copyright. The link to the 1898 Arabic text was taken from the Wikipedia article and the item page was opened in this search.
Where to read it
Editions
Translations
- O. Houdas (tr.), Tarikh es-Soudan, traduction française (Paris, 1900)
- J. O. Hunwick (tr.), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: al-Sadi's Tarikh al-Sudan down to 1613 and other contemporary documents (Leiden, 1999; 2nd ed. 2003), English (not freely online)