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war and peace—overview 1943












            Ibadi-Wangara communities produced an influential    Blanchard, I. (2001). Mining, metallurgy, and minting in the Middle Ages.
            religious-philosophical culture, which embraced a signif-  Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag.
                                                                Devisse, J. (1988).Trade and trade routes in West Africa. In M. El Fasi &
            icant part of the western Islamic world.              I. Hrbek (Eds.). General history of Africa:Vol 3.Africa from the seventh
              The Sunni Maliki phase is associated with the religious  to the eleventh century (pp. 367–435). Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni-
                                                                  versity of California Press.
            reforms of the Berber Almoravid dynasty in North Africa
                                                                Holl,A. (1985). Background to the Ghana empire: Archaeological inves-
            (1039/40–1147). The ruling dynasty and the political  tigations on the transition to statehood in the Dhar Tichitt region
            elites of Wagadu converted to Sunni Islam in the 1070s  (Mauretania). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 4, 73–115.
                                                                Levtzion, N. (1980). Ghana and Mali. New York and London: Africana
            or 1080s and joined the Almoravids (a coalition with the  Publishing Company.
            Senegal Valley-based Takrur  Kingdom; Wagadu  joined  Levtzion, N., & Hopkins, J. F. P. (Ed. & Trans.). (2000). Corpus of early
                                                                  Arabic sources for West African history. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
            this coalition in order to take part in controlling the west-
                                                                  Publishers.
            ern trans-Saharan routes up to the Maghrib).Thus, Islam  McIntosh, R. (1998). The peoples of the Middle Niger. Malden, MA: Black-
            became the state religion of Wagadu.The inhabitants of  well Publishers.
                                                                McIntosh, S. K. (1981). A reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, island of
            the capital’s Muslim section were Kharijites and Sunni  gold. The Journal of African History, 22, 145–158.
            Maliki believers. In the course of the twelfth and thir-  McIntosh, S. (Ed.). (1995). Excavations at Jenné-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and
                                                                  Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 season. Berkeley and
            teenth centuries Kharijites became a minority among the
                                                                  Los Angeles: University of California Press.
            faithful. The Almoravid-Wagadu connection had both a  Messier, J. A. (2001). The Almoravids, West African gold, and the gold
            military and intellectual dimension. Writing between  currency of the Mediterranean basin. Journal of the Economic and
                                                                  Social History of the Orient 17(1), 31–41.
            1137 and 1154, the  Andalusian geographer al-Zuhri  Miller, J. A. (2001).Trading through Islam: The interconnections of Sijil-
            refers to prominent Wagadu scholars, lawyers, and Quran  masa, Ghana, and the Almoravid movement. The Journal of North
                                                                  African Studies, 6(10), 29–58.
            readers in  Andalusian towns. He also mentions the
                                                                Pingree, D. (1970). The fragments of the works of Al-Fazari. Journal of
            Wagadu army commanders who traveled to al-Andalus     Near Eastern Studies, 29, 103–23.
            to participate in the jihad against the Christians of north-  Raimbault, M., & Sanogo, K. (Eds.). (1991). Recherches archéologiques
                                                                  au Mali [Archaeological Research in Mali]. Paris: Éditions Karthala.
            ern Iberia.

            Decline
            By the early thirteenth century Wagadu ceased to be a
            state system in the political geography ofWest Africa.The  War and Peace—
            Soso kingdom, a former tributary located along the
            southern frontier of the empire (late twelfth–early thir-                   Overview
            teenth century) and then the Mali empire (mid-thirteenth–
            mid-fifteenth century) that arose on the Upper Niger      uestions of war and peace have dominated politics
            River reduced Wagadu to a tribute-paying vassal state. Qand philosophy since the dawn of civilization; con-
            Nevertheless, Wagadu’s core zone continued to flourish  quest and resistance have shaped major eras of global
            until the first half of the fifteenth century, after which it  development. But while war and peace are from one per-
            ceased to exist as a political entity.              spective inseparable twins—two sides of the same coin—
                                                                the histories of war and peace have not been so sym-
                                                   Ray A. Kea
                                                                metrical. History has often been written about war;
                                                                “peace studies,” on the other hand, are a modern aca-
                                                                demic invention. (And note which term comes first in this
                               Further Reading
                                                                article’s heading.) This asymmetry points to a funda-
            Berthier, S. (1997), Recherches archéologiques sur la capitale de l’empire
              Ghana [Archaeological research at the capital of the Ghana empire].  mental question about war and peace: Which condition,
              Oxford, UK: Hadrian Books.                        war or peace, is “normal” and which the aberration?
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