Page 166 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V
P. 166
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?