Among a people of such commercial activity and enterprise as the Arabs of Morocco, Tripoli, and Egypt, naturally there were not awanting numbers of students eager to collect and collate information regarding the inland countries to which their merchants travelled. Among the host of historians and geographers who supply us with interesting facts, we may mention El Bekri, El Edrisi (1153), Ebn Said (1282), Ebn Khaldun (1382), and Makrizi (1400).
But the Arabs had their explorers as well as their writers. Among these two stand out with marked prominence, viz., Ebn Batuta (1353), and Leo Africanus (1528). Ebn Batuta, who seems to have been devoured with a thirst for travel, and had visited almost all the countries of the then known world, commenced his Central African explorations from Morocco, and crossed the desert to Walata, the frontier province of Melli, situated not far from the Niger. From Walata he crossed the Niger to the capital of the kingdom, and thence by land proceeded to Timbuktu. From Kabara, the “port” of Timbuktu, he sailed down the Niger to Gogo, the capital of Songhay, and thence turned northward again across the desert by way of the oasis of Tawat to Morocco.
The travels of Leo Africanus were even more extensive, for he travelled over the whole of the Central and Western Sudan. Considering that he wrote an account of his travels from memory many years after, the events recorded, and the accuracy and amount of varied information he gives regarding the countries he visited, are astonishing. He describes not only the kingdoms of Melli, Songhay, and Bornu, but also the countries that lie between, Gober, Katsena, Kano, and Agades, of all of which he has something important to say. Even when he seems to draw most upon our credulity he is generally quite correct, as for instance when he describes the people of one district kindling fires at night under their bedsteads to keep themselves warm. To the truth of this statement the writer of these lines can testify from personal observation, the precaution being adopted, however, not to ward off external cold, but that of ague, a disease to which many places on the Niger are subject at certain times of the year.
It is not our intention to enter into the vexed question of what the Arab writers and travellers knew regarding the course and final destination of the Niger. Those of them who travelled did not do so as geographers, and though they noted accurately enough what they did see, they troubled themselves very little with what they did not see, and held aloof from inquiries of a purely speculative character. M‘Queen[4] has made it clear, however, that many of them were aware that the Nile and the Niger were distinct, and that the general tendency of Arab opinion was to make the latter river fall into the Atlantic.
Much of the confusion as to what the Arabs did know or believe arose largely from the ignorance of European geographers in confounding the western kingdom of Ghana with the central one of Kano, and of the town of Kugha, near the Upper Niger, with that of Kuka in Bornu. With the new light thrown upon the history and geography of the Niger basin, we can now see that the Arab writers had a wonderfully accurate conception of the political and physical characteristics of the region in question. To them is due not only the honour of having raised the veil which shrouded the Sudan, and spread the seeds of civilisation, which have flourished so remarkably, but also of disseminating a knowledge of that region among western nations—a knowledge destined, as we shall see, to be caught up and carried to great ends with European vigour and scientific accuracy.
[CHAPTER III.]
OPENING UP THE WAY TO THE NIGER.
With Leo Africanus the Arab period in the history of African exploration practically closed. Even in that traveller’s day the incurable diseases so characteristic of the Mohammedan states of our time were rapidly developing. Learning and the arts were no longer encouraged. Liberality of thought and missionary enterprise were replaced by Fanaticism, hatred of the stranger, and isolation from all outside genial influences. A blight was falling over everything that had made the Arab name great and glorious in the world’s history.
Happily for the cause of progress, while the Crescent thus waned and lost its lustre in the rising mephitic fogs, the Cross was ever gathering to itself new glories, and proving the herald and morning-star of a brighter and greater era. Under its inspiring influences the western nations were emerging from the gloom and ignorance in which they had been enshrouded, and were feeling the throbs of new heroic impulses.