I should here adduce some further testimony respecting the course of the Nile El Abeed; but as the quotation from Aly Bey in the above Journal of Sciences and the Arts, page 271. asserts it to be towards the east, and again, in page 272. declares it to be towards the west, such incoherence, I presume, requires no confutation. I consider that it originates from Moorish inaccuracy.
The La Mar Zarak of Adams, if any such river exists, may be a corruption of Sagea el Humra, i.e. the Red Stream, a river in the southern confines of Sahara, nearly in the same longitude with Timbuctoo. This river the late Emperor of Marocco, Muley Yezzid, announced as the southern boundary of his dominions; but from the accounts which I have had of it, it was not of that magnitude which Adams ascribes to the Mar Zarak, nor was it precisely in the neighbourhood of Timbuctoo, when I was a resident in South Barbary: rivers, however, which pass through sandy or desert districts, often change their courses in the space of twenty-four hours, by the drifting of the moving sands impelled by the wind; instances of which I have myself often witnessed.
If this river proceeded from the Desert, it might have had the name of El Bahar Sahara, i.e. the River of Sahara; the word La Mar is a lingua franca, or corrupt Spanish word, signifying the sea, and might have been used to this poor sailor by a native to make it the more intelligible to him. Many Spanish words having crept into the Arabic vocabulary, and are occasionally used by those Africans who have had intercourse with Europeans.
The next passage for animadversion is as follows:--
"The state in which he represented Timbuctoo, and its being the residence of a Negro sovereign, instead of a muselman."
The state in which he has represented Timbuctoo, is, I think, extremely inaccurate; and being a slave, it is more than probable, that he was placed in a Fondaque [244], or Caravansera, belonging to the King, which he mistook for his palace; but that his narrative should be deemed inaccurate, because he has described the town of Timbuctoo to be under the sovereignty of a Negro prince, is to me incomprehensible.
Footnote 244:[ (return) ] Vide Jackson's enlarged Account of Marocoo, &c. p. 298.
The various sources of information that I have investigated, uniformly declare that sovereign to be a Negro, and that his name in the year 1800, was Woolo. This account, it appears, is confirmed by Adams, who says, [245] Woolo was King of Timbuctoo in 1810, and that he was then old and grey-headed. Some years after the above period, Riley's Narrative, epitomised in Leyden's Discoveries and Travels in Africa, vol. i., speaking of the King of Timbuctoo, says, this sovereign is a very large, old, grey-headed black man, called Shegar, which means Sultan. This, however, I must observe is a misinterpretation of the word Shegar, which is an African-Arabic word, and signifies red or carrotty, and is a word applicable to his physiognomy; but certainly not to his rank:--Abd Shegar, a carrotty or red Negro. If these two testimonies, since 1800, be correct, then the anachronism of which I am accused in the New Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, (title Africa,) is misapplied.
Footnote 245:[ (return) ] Since publishing this letter, Mr. Bowdich, in his Account of Ashantee, pages 194, 195, says, Woolo was King of Timbuctoo in 1807, or ten years before Mr. Bowdich was at Ashantee.
Many of this king's civil officers, however, in 1800, were muselmen; but the military were altogether Negroes.