{"title":"The History of a Genuine Fake Philosophical Treatise (Ḥatatā Zar’a Yā‘eqob and","authors":"Anaïs Wion","doi":"10.4000/afriques.3188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.3188","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45365950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Certainly fooling a scholar is in itself legitimate and even praiseworthy, since it makes him feel for a time the sweetest, smoothest emotions, at the prospect of a great discovery. The illusion not only compensates for the disappointment, but even surpasses it. So what would it take to fool an entire academy? The following study focuses on one text, the Treatise of Zar'a Yā'eqob or Ḥatatā Zar'a Yā'eqob, and its appendix, the Ḥatatā Walda Heywat. For the sake of simplicity and as a first step...
{"title":"The History of a Genuine Fake Philosophical Treatise (Ḥatatā Zar’a Yā‘eqob and Ḥ","authors":"Aïssatou Mbodj, Anaïs Wion","doi":"10.4000/afriques.3154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.3154","url":null,"abstract":"Certainly fooling a scholar is in itself legitimate and even praiseworthy, since it makes him feel for a time the sweetest, smoothest emotions, at the prospect of a great discovery. The illusion not only compensates for the disappointment, but even surpasses it. So what would it take to fool an entire academy? The following study focuses on one text, the Treatise of Zar'a Yā'eqob or Ḥatatā Zar'a Yā'eqob, and its appendix, the Ḥatatā Walda Heywat. For the sake of simplicity and as a first step...","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42609796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Quels nouveaux questionnements emergent plusieurs decennies apres les premieres etudes academiques ? Quelles sont les reponses apportees et quelles sources sont mobilisees ? Ce numero thematique propose un bilan historiographique des recherches menees sur les villes, tout en s’inscrivant dans les reflexions methodologiques les plus recentes autour de la question des relations entre le territoire urbain et l’exercice du pouvoir avant le xxe siecle, a travers ses aspects materiels et symboliques. Des etudes de cas au Maghreb, en Afrique occidentale forestiere et sahelienne et en l'Afrique de l'Est abordent ces enjeux.
{"title":"Les villes en Afrique avant 1900. Bilan historiographique et perspectives de recherche","authors":"Clélia Coret, Roberto Zaugg, Gérard Chouin","doi":"10.4000/afriques.3043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.3043","url":null,"abstract":"Quels nouveaux questionnements emergent plusieurs decennies apres les premieres etudes academiques ? Quelles sont les reponses apportees et quelles sources sont mobilisees ? Ce numero thematique propose un bilan historiographique des recherches menees sur les villes, tout en s’inscrivant dans les reflexions methodologiques les plus recentes autour de la question des relations entre le territoire urbain et l’exercice du pouvoir avant le xxe siecle, a travers ses aspects materiels et symboliques. Des etudes de cas au Maghreb, en Afrique occidentale forestiere et sahelienne et en l'Afrique de l'Est abordent ces enjeux.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47273068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Like other Islamic reform and state-building movements across the pre-colonial Sahel, the Sokoto Jihad of 1804 had started genuine urbanization processes with architectural references to Islamic ideals of inhabited space. But in the early Sokoto Empire, jihadist urban planning met with a Hausa environment already divided into urban centers and rural areas. Existing Hausa towns were often restructured and enlarged, with a shift from the central position of the palaces towards that of the new mosques built under the aegis of the Jihadist leaders. This article hence analyses the construction of Sokoto as a capital city from the “drawing board” as a case study. In addition, it discusses the location and style of Jihadist mosques in Sokoto, Kano and Zaria within a new concept of Muslim urbanity. Although urban planning in Sokoto was not carried out by map sketches, several maps produced in the Sokoto Empire will be used to study the graphical understanding of Sokoto Jihadist urbanity expressed by rectangular walls and a special mosque-palace order with only very simple and puritan decor. But despite the private activities in mosque building among the male Jihadist elite, Sokoto lacked a state-owned and constant central mosque, because donors and their offspring personally had to care for the upkeep of the buildings. And with the second Sokoto Sultan, Muhammad Bello, urbanization activities gradually shifted from the “old” centers to the frontier of the Empire: on the one hand, militarized border towns (Arabic ribāt, pl. arbita) were erected as profane material protection against military enemies in the periphery. Yet on the other hand, they served as a reference in the Jihadist ideology contrasting the Land of Islam with the Land of Unbelief. The ribāt was a planned city attracting mainly slaves longing for freedom and salvation by the Jihadist promise that any inhabitant of the frontier city would eventually be liberated and enter Paradise. But only for a limited time span did they serve as social and ethnic melting pots on the frontier, before many of them were turned into slave plantations. This phase of intense foundation of fortified settlements must also be understood as a process of sedentarization and aging of the first Jihad soldiers. Equipped with land, wives and slaves from the booty, many soldiers and commanders were settled in new towns and established a living there with their families. The article will thus finally analyze the Sokoto utopia of a completely sedentarized and urbanized Muslim state—a policy propagated both against fellow Fulbe pastoralists and mobile Tuareg allies. This study engages with Sokoto Jihadist urbanization in their theories and practices in the first half of the 19th century and unfolds the Jihadist claims to be “urban by nature.”
{"title":"“Urban by nature”: The Sokoto jihadist approach to urban planning","authors":"Stephanie Zehnle","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2993","url":null,"abstract":"Like other Islamic reform and state-building movements across the pre-colonial Sahel, the Sokoto Jihad of 1804 had started genuine urbanization processes with architectural references to Islamic ideals of inhabited space. But in the early Sokoto Empire, jihadist urban planning met with a Hausa environment already divided into urban centers and rural areas. Existing Hausa towns were often restructured and enlarged, with a shift from the central position of the palaces towards that of the new mosques built under the aegis of the Jihadist leaders. This article hence analyses the construction of Sokoto as a capital city from the “drawing board” as a case study. In addition, it discusses the location and style of Jihadist mosques in Sokoto, Kano and Zaria within a new concept of Muslim urbanity. Although urban planning in Sokoto was not carried out by map sketches, several maps produced in the Sokoto Empire will be used to study the graphical understanding of Sokoto Jihadist urbanity expressed by rectangular walls and a special mosque-palace order with only very simple and puritan decor. But despite the private activities in mosque building among the male Jihadist elite, Sokoto lacked a state-owned and constant central mosque, because donors and their offspring personally had to care for the upkeep of the buildings. And with the second Sokoto Sultan, Muhammad Bello, urbanization activities gradually shifted from the “old” centers to the frontier of the Empire: on the one hand, militarized border towns (Arabic ribāt, pl. arbita) were erected as profane material protection against military enemies in the periphery. Yet on the other hand, they served as a reference in the Jihadist ideology contrasting the Land of Islam with the Land of Unbelief. The ribāt was a planned city attracting mainly slaves longing for freedom and salvation by the Jihadist promise that any inhabitant of the frontier city would eventually be liberated and enter Paradise. But only for a limited time span did they serve as social and ethnic melting pots on the frontier, before many of them were turned into slave plantations. This phase of intense foundation of fortified settlements must also be understood as a process of sedentarization and aging of the first Jihad soldiers. Equipped with land, wives and slaves from the booty, many soldiers and commanders were settled in new towns and established a living there with their families. The article will thus finally analyze the Sokoto utopia of a completely sedentarized and urbanized Muslim state—a policy propagated both against fellow Fulbe pastoralists and mobile Tuareg allies. This study engages with Sokoto Jihadist urbanization in their theories and practices in the first half of the 19th century and unfolds the Jihadist claims to be “urban by nature.”","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43668913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What new issues arise several decades after the first academic studies? What are the answers and what sources are mobilized? This special issue proposes a historiographical review of research conducted on cities, taking into account the most recent methodological reflections on the issue of the relationship between the urban territory and the exercise of power before the 20th century, focussing on its material and symbolic aspects. Case studies in the Maghreb, West Africa’s forest and Sahelian regions and East Africa examine these stakes.
{"title":"Cities in Africa before 1900. Historiography and Research Perspectives","authors":"Clélia Coret, Roberto Zaugg, Gérard Chouin","doi":"10.4000/AFRIQUES.3088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/AFRIQUES.3088","url":null,"abstract":"What new issues arise several decades after the first academic studies? What are the answers and what sources are mobilized? This special issue proposes a historiographical review of research conducted on cities, taking into account the most recent methodological reflections on the issue of the relationship between the urban territory and the exercise of power before the 20th century, focussing on its material and symbolic aspects. Case studies in the Maghreb, West Africa’s forest and Sahelian regions and East Africa examine these stakes.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43669528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Toute societe humaine est marquee par l’omnipresence quotidienne de l’eau, que ce soit pour la consommation humaine et animale, les tâches domestiques, l’agriculture, l’industrie ou encore la religion, dont la gestion implique necessairement de fortes interactions sociales. Les sources ecrites attestent notamment que, dans le paysage urbain, les grands travaux hydrauliques participent, pour asseoir leur legitimite et attirer les bonnes grâces des habitants, a la strategie des pouvoirs politiques, qui jouissent bien souvent de la primeur de ces amenagements. Meme lorsque le choix d’implantation d’une ville depend d’une position strategique, l’acces a l’eau, en tant que ressource naturelle elementaire a la vie, demeure essentiel et represente meme, dans certains milieux defavorables comme les zones oasiennes, un defi quotidien. Situee dans les marges presahariennes du Maroc actuel, l’ancienne cite de Sigilmāsa etait consideree comme une plaque tournante du commerce transsaharien entre le viiie et le xve siecle, et une ville entouree par les eaux dans sa representation symbolique medievale. Par le biais d’une analyse croisee des sources ecrites et des donnees archeologiques recentes, il s’agira de deceler quelconques manifestations des pouvoirs notamment, dans les investissements materiels alloues aux structures hydrauliques urbaines, pour poser les jalons d’une hydro-histoire de l’oasis du Tāfīlālt.
{"title":"L’eau à Siğilmāsa (Maroc) : témoins écrits et matériels pour une hydro-histoire du Tāfīlālt (VIIIe-XVe siècles)","authors":"Thomas Soubira","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2937","url":null,"abstract":"Toute societe humaine est marquee par l’omnipresence quotidienne de l’eau, que ce soit pour la consommation humaine et animale, les tâches domestiques, l’agriculture, l’industrie ou encore la religion, dont la gestion implique necessairement de fortes interactions sociales. Les sources ecrites attestent notamment que, dans le paysage urbain, les grands travaux hydrauliques participent, pour asseoir leur legitimite et attirer les bonnes grâces des habitants, a la strategie des pouvoirs politiques, qui jouissent bien souvent de la primeur de ces amenagements. Meme lorsque le choix d’implantation d’une ville depend d’une position strategique, l’acces a l’eau, en tant que ressource naturelle elementaire a la vie, demeure essentiel et represente meme, dans certains milieux defavorables comme les zones oasiennes, un defi quotidien. Situee dans les marges presahariennes du Maroc actuel, l’ancienne cite de Sigilmāsa etait consideree comme une plaque tournante du commerce transsaharien entre le viiie et le xve siecle, et une ville entouree par les eaux dans sa representation symbolique medievale. Par le biais d’une analyse croisee des sources ecrites et des donnees archeologiques recentes, il s’agira de deceler quelconques manifestations des pouvoirs notamment, dans les investissements materiels alloues aux structures hydrauliques urbaines, pour poser les jalons d’une hydro-histoire de l’oasis du Tāfīlālt.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46330964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper focuses on Iwo, an ancient Yoruba city that traces its roots to Ile-Ife and one of the cities that received, accommodated, and integrated refugees from various parts of Yorubaland during the 19th century. It investigates the concessions made by members of the Iwo ruling class to accommodate the influx of military and civilian populations from various parts of the disintegrating Old Oyo Empire. The paper utilizes published works on urbanization in Africa and oral traditions collected by the author between 1978 and 2018. Although limited in quantity and significance, Western missionary travelogues and archival information are also consulted. In addition to explaining changes in the layout of the city and its outlying townships and villages, the paper examines the scenography of power among the ruling elite and the advent and impact of Islam in Iwo.
{"title":"Iwo: A reevaluation of refugee integration, intergroup relations, and the scenography of power in a 19th-century Yoruba city","authors":"A. Adebayo","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2797","url":null,"abstract":"This paper focuses on Iwo, an ancient Yoruba city that traces its roots to Ile-Ife and one of the cities that received, accommodated, and integrated refugees from various parts of Yorubaland during the 19th century. It investigates the concessions made by members of the Iwo ruling class to accommodate the influx of military and civilian populations from various parts of the disintegrating Old Oyo Empire. The paper utilizes published works on urbanization in Africa and oral traditions collected by the author between 1978 and 2018. Although limited in quantity and significance, Western missionary travelogues and archival information are also consulted. In addition to explaining changes in the layout of the city and its outlying townships and villages, the paper examines the scenography of power among the ruling elite and the advent and impact of Islam in Iwo.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46606025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Au cours de son voyage a Tombouctou en 1827-1828, Rene Caillie s’interesse au mode de vie des commercants musulmans, ses compagnons de route, et des villageois animistes etablis sur le trajet des caravanes. Il s’agit la d’une experience exceptionnelle a bien des titres, meme si ce temoignage doit faire l’objet d’une approche critique. Rene Caillie decrit notamment les pratiques alimentaires des uns et des autres, ou des uns avec les autres, selon leur appartenance religieuse. Ces comportements donnent une image contrastee des relations entre animistes et musulmans, qui peuvent etre faites d’interdits, de tolerances ou de compromis de la part des commercants « mandingues ». Ces pratiques montrent aussi diverses manieres d’etre musulman en Afrique soudano-sahelienne au debut du XIXe siecle, en fonction des tendances pacifiques ou conquerantes de l’islam, des necessites du commerce a longue distance, et de la pregnance de certaines habitudes locales.
{"title":"Ramadan et « sauce à la souris ». Interdits et compromis alimentaires entre musulmans et animistes d’Afrique occidentale d’après le récit de René Caillié au début du XIXe siècle","authors":"M. Chastanet","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2498","url":null,"abstract":"Au cours de son voyage a Tombouctou en 1827-1828, Rene Caillie s’interesse au mode de vie des commercants musulmans, ses compagnons de route, et des villageois animistes etablis sur le trajet des caravanes. Il s’agit la d’une experience exceptionnelle a bien des titres, meme si ce temoignage doit faire l’objet d’une approche critique. Rene Caillie decrit notamment les pratiques alimentaires des uns et des autres, ou des uns avec les autres, selon leur appartenance religieuse. Ces comportements donnent une image contrastee des relations entre animistes et musulmans, qui peuvent etre faites d’interdits, de tolerances ou de compromis de la part des commercants « mandingues ». Ces pratiques montrent aussi diverses manieres d’etre musulman en Afrique soudano-sahelienne au debut du XIXe siecle, en fonction des tendances pacifiques ou conquerantes de l’islam, des necessites du commerce a longue distance, et de la pregnance de certaines habitudes locales.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45124835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Revisiting the attribution of figures to Mumuye, provides us with an opportunity to think about the effects of ethnic labelling on our appreciation of ‘precontemporary African art’. By virtue of not being typical, extreme cases throw more general issues into sharp relief. The mismatch between the renown and the documentation of precontemporary Mumuye art has few parallels. Mumuye figures are celebrated as icons of African sculpture by the institutions and personnel of what we have grown accustomed to call the ‘artworld’, one that encompasses museums, galleries and auction houses; publications on Mumuye ethnography, language and history in what, for convenience, we can contrast as the ‘ethnoworld’ continue to draw upon research undertaken a half century ago or earlier. Artworld and ethnoworld discourses have diverged, even about fundamental questions of identity. What is the relationship, for instance, between the ethnoworld’s understanding of Mumuye ethnicity and the artworld’s use of the ethnic adjectice in ‘Mumuye style’? A handful of Mumuye objects were collected before the Nigerian Civil war (1967–1970) during which most of those the artworld would consider ‘authentic’ left the country. This emptying of the local reservoirs has created a negative space that invites efforts at repair, not least because, like other markets, the art market abhors a vacuum. Understanding the histories of precontemporary Mumuye artworks requires careful methodology and a realistic acceptance of the likely limits of knowledge. Scholarly attention continues to find value in existing documentation, though with necessarily diminishing returns. Interesting insights have also been derived from parts of the overall assemblage of artworks attributed to the Mumuye. If the artworld took lead responsibility for a catalogue raisonne that reassembled the decade-long outflow from the late 1960s this would enable a more systematic approach to what are currently piecemeal attempts to map formal resemblances in artworks.
{"title":"Negative spaces of Mumuye figure sculpture—style and ethnicity","authors":"R. Fardon","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2586","url":null,"abstract":"Revisiting the attribution of figures to Mumuye, provides us with an opportunity to think about the effects of ethnic labelling on our appreciation of ‘precontemporary African art’. By virtue of not being typical, extreme cases throw more general issues into sharp relief. The mismatch between the renown and the documentation of precontemporary Mumuye art has few parallels. Mumuye figures are celebrated as icons of African sculpture by the institutions and personnel of what we have grown accustomed to call the ‘artworld’, one that encompasses museums, galleries and auction houses; publications on Mumuye ethnography, language and history in what, for convenience, we can contrast as the ‘ethnoworld’ continue to draw upon research undertaken a half century ago or earlier. Artworld and ethnoworld discourses have diverged, even about fundamental questions of identity. What is the relationship, for instance, between the ethnoworld’s understanding of Mumuye ethnicity and the artworld’s use of the ethnic adjectice in ‘Mumuye style’? A handful of Mumuye objects were collected before the Nigerian Civil war (1967–1970) during which most of those the artworld would consider ‘authentic’ left the country. This emptying of the local reservoirs has created a negative space that invites efforts at repair, not least because, like other markets, the art market abhors a vacuum. Understanding the histories of precontemporary Mumuye artworks requires careful methodology and a realistic acceptance of the likely limits of knowledge. Scholarly attention continues to find value in existing documentation, though with necessarily diminishing returns. Interesting insights have also been derived from parts of the overall assemblage of artworks attributed to the Mumuye. If the artworld took lead responsibility for a catalogue raisonne that reassembled the decade-long outflow from the late 1960s this would enable a more systematic approach to what are currently piecemeal attempts to map formal resemblances in artworks.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46160051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
If one of the aims of art history is to understand better the original meaning of the works studied, then an historical methodology is absolutely essential to the identification and interpretation of precolonial objects. This essay focuses on 16th- and 17th-century ivory carvings identified as ‘Luso-African’. Both the geographical provenance and the ‘ethnic’ or cultural origins of the presumed artists have been mistakenly identified. Geographical terms associated with the Upper Guinea Coast in the 16th century do not correspond to the region these terms are associated with today. Likewise, the term used to identify the culture of the artists, ‘Sapes’, does not correspond to any contemporary group using that designation.The objects are richly documented in late 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese sources. These sources do not claim that only the southern ‘Sapes’ carved ivory. If, therefore, one assumes that some of the works were produced in the northern range of ‘Sape’ occupation, present-day Guinea-Bissau, it then becomes advisable for the art historian to compare these ivories with the rich corpus of wood sculpture made by the groups whose ancestors belonged to or lived adjacent to the northern ‘Sapes’. Paramount among these groups are the Bijogos. Bijogo carving is historically documented to the 17th century. Such comparisons may help understand the symbolism of the saltcellars.
{"title":"Finding provenance, seeking context","authors":"P. Mark","doi":"10.4000/afriques.2752","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/afriques.2752","url":null,"abstract":"If one of the aims of art history is to understand better the original meaning of the works studied, then an historical methodology is absolutely essential to the identification and interpretation of precolonial objects. This essay focuses on 16th- and 17th-century ivory carvings identified as ‘Luso-African’. Both the geographical provenance and the ‘ethnic’ or cultural origins of the presumed artists have been mistakenly identified. Geographical terms associated with the Upper Guinea Coast in the 16th century do not correspond to the region these terms are associated with today. Likewise, the term used to identify the culture of the artists, ‘Sapes’, does not correspond to any contemporary group using that designation.The objects are richly documented in late 16th- and 17th-century Portuguese sources. These sources do not claim that only the southern ‘Sapes’ carved ivory. If, therefore, one assumes that some of the works were produced in the northern range of ‘Sape’ occupation, present-day Guinea-Bissau, it then becomes advisable for the art historian to compare these ivories with the rich corpus of wood sculpture made by the groups whose ancestors belonged to or lived adjacent to the northern ‘Sapes’. Paramount among these groups are the Bijogos. Bijogo carving is historically documented to the 17th century. Such comparisons may help understand the symbolism of the saltcellars.","PeriodicalId":41436,"journal":{"name":"Afriques-Debats Methodes et Terrains d Histoire","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46483049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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