Abubakari II

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Abubakari II was a mansa of the Mali Empire, the successor of his nephew Mohammed ibn Gao and predecessor of Kankan Musa I. Abubakari II appears to have abdicated his throne in order to explore "the limits of the ocean"; however, his expedition never returned. Proponents of pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories have claimed that Abubakari reached the Americas some time in the early 14th century. The strong consensus among mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars is that there is no evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas, and that there are insufficient evidential grounds to suppose there has been contact between Africa and the New World at any point in the pre-Columbian era.[1]

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[edit] Background

Mansa Abubakari II, sometimes called Abu Bekr II or Mansa Mohammed, was one of two sons of Kolonkan, a sister of the founding emperor Sundjata Keita. He was the last of a mini-dynasty within the Keita clan of emperor's descending from Kolonkan. After his abdication in 1311, the Faga Laye mini-dynasty would control the empire.

[edit] Reign

Virtually all that is known of Abubakari II is from the scholar Al-Umari during Kankan Musa I's historic hajj to Mecca. While in Egypt, Musa explained the way that he had inherited the throne after the abdication of the previous ruler. He explained that in 1310, the emperor financed the building of 200 vessels of men and another 200 of supplies to explore the limits of the sea that served as empire's western frontier. The mission was inconclusive, and the only information available on its fate came from a single sailor who refused to follow the other ships once they reached a "river in the sea" and a whirlpool. According to Musa I, his predecessor was undeterred and launched another fleet with himself at the helm. In 1311, the previous ruler temporarily ceded power to Musa, then serving as his kankoro-sigui or vizier, and departed with a thousand vessels of men and a like number of supplies. After the emperor failed to return, Musa became emperor.[2]

[edit] Debate on Trans-Atlantic Contact

According to Mark Hyman, Abubakari II had no interest in battles, conquests, Koranic recitals but instead he had interest in scholar's stories of a “gourd-shaped world, the big ocean to the west and the new world beyond that”. The mansa interviewed sail-builders from Egypt and Mediterranean cities and decided to build ships on the coast of Senegambia. The preparation for the journey included carpenters, smiths, men who knew navigation, merchants, potters, jewelers, weavers, magicians, diviners, thinkers, and all branches of the Mandinka military. Every vessel tugged a supply-boat with food for two years, dried meat, grain, preserved fruit in ceramic jars, and gold for trade. [3] Key Ships would communicate with drummers, all communications were coordinated from the leading ship of the fleet. [3][4]

Ibn Fadlullah al-Umari (1300-1348), in his encyclopaedic work Masalik Al-Absar, relates a story obtained from the Mamluk governor of Cairo, Ibn Amir Hajib. While Mansa Musa was visiting Cairo as part of his pilgramate to Mecca, Ibn Amir Hajib asked how he had succeeded to the throne, and this is what Ibn Amir Hajib reported he was told:

The ruler who preceded me did not believe that it was impossible to reach the extremity of the ocean that encircles the earth (meaning the Atlantic): he wanted to reach that (end) and was determined to pursue his plan. So he equipped two hundred boats full of men, and many others full of gold, water and provisions sufficient for several years. He ordered the captain not to return until they had reached the other end of the ocean, or until he had exhausted the provisions and water. So they set out on their journey. They were absent for a long period, and, at last just one boat returned. When questioned the captain replied: 'O Prince, we navigated for a long period, until we saw in the midst of the ocean a great river which flowing massively. My boat was the last one; others were ahead of me, and they were drowned in the great whirlpool and never came out again. I sailed back to escape this current.' But the Sultan would not believe him. He ordered two thousand boats to be equipped for him and his men, and one thousand more for water and provisions. Then he conferred the regency on me for the term of his absence, and departed with his men, never to return nor to give a sign of life.[5]

The reference just used for the quote and the source of the quote leaves out the sentence which precedes the quote, "We belong to a family where the son succeeds the father in power.[6] Levtzion comments [7] "He did not say 'my father'. This evidence strengthens the claim that Mansa Musa did not succeed his father."

Ivan van Sertima, a Guyanese scholar teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey, argues that Abubakari II travelled to the New World in They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ For views representative of this consensus, see the considerations on the question advanced in Haslip-Viera et al. (1997), who for example note "no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World". See also the supporting responses in peer-review printed in the article, by David Browman, Michael D. Coe, Ann Cyphers, Peter Furst, and other academics active in the field. Ortiz de Montellano et al. (1997, passim.) continues the case against Africa-Americas contacts. Other prominent Mesoamerican specialists such as UCR Riverside anthropology professor Karl Taube are confident that "There simply is no material evidence of any Pre-Hispanic contact between the Old World and Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century". (Taube 2004, p.1)
  2. ^ "Abbas Hamdani, An Islamic Background to the Voyages of Discovery. Language and Literature" in The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Studien Und Texte Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters), 1994, by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Editor)
  3. ^ a b Blacks Before America, Mark Hyman, Xlibris Corporatio, 2003. ISBN 1413400116
  4. ^ African Presence in Early America, Ivan Van Sertima, Transaction Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0887387152
  5. ^ "Abbas Hamdani, An Islamic Background to the Voyages of Discovery. Language and Literature" in The Legacy of Muslim Spain (Studien Und Texte Zur Geistesgeschichte Des Mittelalters), 1994, by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Editor)
  6. ^ http://www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=646#ftn5 which sources the quote from Al-Umari, 1927, Masalik al Absar fi Mamalik el-Amsar, French translation by Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1927, pp. 59, 74-75. See also Qalqashandi, Subh al-A'sha, V, 294.
  7. ^ The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings of Mali N. Levtzion The Journal of African History, Vol. 4, No. 3. (1963), pp. 341-353.

[edit] References

Austen, Ralph A.; and Jan A.M.M. Jansen (1996). "History, Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun's Chronology of Mali Rulers" (PDF online reproduction at DSpace Leiden University). History in Africa 23 (1): pp.17–28. Waltham, MA: African Studies Association. ISSN 0361-5413. OCLC 2246846. 
Baxter, Joan (2000-12-13), written at Mali, “Africa's 'greatest explorer'”, BBC News Online (London: BBC), <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1068950.stm>. Retrieved on 10 April 2008 
Bell, Nawal Morcos (1972). "The Age of Mansa Musa of Mali: Problems in Succession and Chronology". International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (2): pp.221–234. New York: Africana Publishing, for the Boston University African Studies Center. ISSN 0361-7882. OCLC 48537235. 
Cooley, William Desborough (1841). The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, An Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. London: J. Arrowsmith. OCLC 4760870. 
Haslip-Viera, Gabriel; Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, and Warren Barbour (June 1997). "Robbing Native American Cultures: Van Sertima's Afrocentricity and the Olmecs" (Reproduced online). Current Anthropology 38 (3): pp.419–441. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, sponsored by Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. doi:10.1086/204626. ISSN 0011-3204. OCLC 62217742. 
Levtzion, Nehemia (1963). "The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings of Mali". Journal of African History 4 (3): pp.341–353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISSN 0021-8537. OCLC 1783006. 
Levtzion, Nehemia (1977). "The western Mahgrib and Sudan", in Roland Anthony Oliver (volume ed.): The Cambridge History of Africa: Vol. 3, From c. 1050 to c. 1600, John Donnelly Fage and Roland Oliver (series general eds.), reprinted 2001, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.331–462. ISBN 0-521-20981-1. OCLC 185545332. 
Masonen, Pekka (2000). The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. Humaniora, no. 309. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. ISBN 951-41-0886-8. OCLC 45681680. 
Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard; Gabriel Haslip-Viera, and Warren Barbour (Spring 1997). "They Were NOT Here before Columbus: Afrocentric Hyperdiffusionism in the 1990s". Ethnohistory 44 (2): pp.199–234. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, issued by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ISSN 0014-1801. OCLC 42388116. 
Taube, Karl (2004). Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks (PDF online reproduction), Pre-Columbian Art at Dumbarton Oaks, no. 2, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection; Trustees of Harvard University. ISBN 0-884-02275-7. OCLC 56096117. Retrieved on 2008-04-10. 
Preceded by
Mohammed ibn Gao		 Mansa of the Mali Empire
1310–1312		 Succeeded by
Kankan Musa I

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