A city before Mecca: Cairo and the hajj of Kanem and Borno pilgrims (12th-17th c.)

This article explores the position of Cairo as a hub for pilgrims coming from the Lake Chad area, and especially from the sultanates of Kanem and Borno, during the Mamluk and early Ottoman rules over Egypt between the 12th and the 17th centuries. The Kanemi and Bornoan pilgrims staying in Cairo participated to the ḥaǧǧ, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the most important rites in Islam. Considering the interwaving of politics, trade and religious practices related to the pilgrimage to Mecca, the ḥaǧǧ is a unique form of mobility. It respects its own calendar, its dynamics and its stakes . Beyond the religious aspect, it can be studied as a social and political historical phenomenon, but also as a facilitator of material and immaterial circulations . Here, pilgrims play a crucial role in fostering the circulation of ideas and the consolidation of transnational networks

Le sultan de papier. Reconstruction d'une lettre mamelouke pour le Sahel

This article aims to study the materiality of diplomatic relations between Mamluk Egypt and the Mali and Borno sultanates by reconstructing a Mamluk diplomatic letter from 1440, which has now disappeared. Using the Computer-Assisted Drawing and 15th century Mamluk chancery manuals, it is possible to reconstruct a Mamluk pseudo-letter from a copy of a letter authorizing the Sultan of Takrūr’s visit to Cairo for the pilgrimage to Mecca. The reproduction of an artefact of Mamluk power for the Islamic rulers of the Sahel is an opportunity to test the chancery standards enunciated by the Mamluk secretaries on a text that is deprived of its validation marks. Above all, the analysis of the result makes it possible to question the material role of letters in transsaharan diplomatic exchanges, in the context of the diplomacy of the ḥaǧǧ of Sahelian sultans as well as the material flows of the written materials on both sides of the Sahara

'Peace be upon those who follow the right way' : diplomatic practices between Mamluk Cairo and the Borno Sultanate at the end of the eighth/fourteenth century

Online Publication Date: 07 Jan 201

Les lettres du pouvoir au Sahel islamique : marques, adaptations et continuités administratives au Borno (1823-1918)

Mis en ligne sur Cairn.info le 29/11/2019. Le texte intégral en libre accès sera disponible à cette adresse en janvier 2022.À travers l’analyse de trente-sept lettres diplomatiques provenant du Borno (nord-est du Nigeria actuel), datés de 1824 à 1918, cet article apporte une nouvelle lumière sur le fonctionnement d’une administration au service d’une dynastie musulmane du Sahel avant la colonisation. Au-delà des normes caractérisant l’écriture du pouvoir au Borno, les variations graphiques des lettres dévoilent une administration au travail, qui adapte ses pratiques scripturaires en fonction du destinataire. L’analyse graphologique des écritures permet alors d’identifier une famille de secrétaires qui remonte au XVIe siècle, dont la charge fut indépendante des révolutions de palais. Descendants de l’imam Aḥmad b. Furṭū (c. 1576), ils assurèrent une extraordinaire continuité de pratiques d’écriture du pouvoir au Borno, jusqu’aux premières années de la colonisation

Du Lac Tchad à la Mecque : le Sultanat du Borno et son monde (XVIe-XVIIe siècle)

This history of the sultanate of Borno (1391-1814) explores: representations of the sultanate from local Arabic sources (offering a cultural history of Borno); an environmental history of the sultanate’s surroundings, Lake Chad, the Sahel and Sahara; an examination of the mobility in the sultanate, focusing on the Hajj (using histories of religion and migration); and an account of the building of Borno as an Islamic state. It is the first comprehensive history of Borno and its connections, from Morocco to Mecca, and Ghana to Istanbul, and establishes it at the geographical, political, social and cultural heart of that world

Looking for the lost norm: The power letters of Borno (1823-1918)

Since the Early Modern period, the Borno rulers used writing to communicate with other rulers, govern their subjects and express their power. In the 19th century, the Kanemi dynasty, new rulers of this Islamic State from present day North-Eastern Nigeria, produced an important corpus of diplomatic letters to African and European rulers, travellers or pilgrims. Through the analysis of forty-two of these diplomatic and legal Arabic documents, dated from 1824 to 1918, this article aims to show that Borno scribes were part of an administration in charge of giving a peculiar visual identity to the documents, according to the canons of the new dynasty. The seal, the layout, the dimensions, and the religious formulas followed norms beyond the particularities of the scribes and dynastic successions. The continuity of these norms over a century demonstrates that writing for political purposes was, as in many places of Africa, a common practice that created specific skills and rules, shedding new light on the functioning of state administration in precolonial Sahe

Ressusciter l’archive. Reconstruction et histoire d’une lettre mamelouke pour le sultan du Takrūr (1440)

This article aims to study the materiality of diplomatic relations between Mamluk Egypt and the Mali and Borno sultanates by reconstructing a Mamluk diplomatic letter from 1440, which has now disappeared. Using the Computer‑Assisted Drawing and 15th century Mamluk chancery manuals, it is possible to reconstruct a Mamluk pseudo‑letter from a copy of a letter authorizing the Sultan of Takrūr’s visit to Cairo for the pilgrimage to Mecca. The reproduction of an artifact of Mamluk power for the Islamic rulers of the Sahel is an opportunity to test the chancery standards enunciated by the Mamluk secretaries on a text that is deprived of its validation marks. Above all, the analysis of the result makes it possible to question the material role of letters in trans-Saharan diplomatic exchanges, in the context of the diplomacy of the ḥaǧǧ of Sahelian sultans as well as the material flows of the written materials on both sides of the Sahara