1. “Mande world” designates the vast West African regions inhabited by Mande-speakers, the northern subgroup, the southwestern subgroup, and the southeastern subgroup. Whether imposing hegemonies over pre-existing cultural-linguistic spaces—mainly West Atlantic in the south, Voltaic further east—or assimilating into “stranger” groups, all peoples of the Mande world identified with Wagadu (see map; for Wagadu see below). Hence, although similar, they were ultimately differentiated by shifting linguistic and cultural repertories, fluid ritual boundaries, and variable political formations.

2. Soninke is a dialect of the Mande northern subgroup.

3. A qintar was of the same order as the former British hundreweight, i.e., 112 lbs. or about 50 kilograms: Levtzion, Nehemia and Hopkins, J. F. P. eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources of West African History (Cambridge, 1981), 19-22, 43-52, 62-87, 279–304.Google Scholar It is worth reminding readers that Ibn Hawqal never ventured south of Sijilmasa, his claims to the contrary. This did not prevent his remarkable “I saw at Awdaghost” statement, where the famous promissory note is supposed to have been: ibid, 43, 45, 47; see especially ibid., 381n6. The ruins and salt constructions at Taghaza are still visible. Mauny, Raymond, Tableau géographique de l'ouest africain au moyen âge, d'après les sources écrites, la tradition et l'archéologie (Dakar, 1961), 116-17, 327–32.Google Scholar

4. See, for example, Davidson, Basil, The Lost Cities of Africa (Boston, 1959)Google Scholar; idem., The African Past: Chronicles From Antiquity to Modern Times (Boston, 1964); idem., “Songhay—End of an Epoch,” West African Review, 33 (August 1962), 22-27. See as well his more recent, The Search for Africa: History, Culture and Politics (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Awe, Bolanle, “Empires of the Western Sudan: Ghana, Mali and Songhai” in Ajayi, J. F. A. and Espie, Ian, eds., A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan, 1965), 55–71Google Scholar; or Levtzion, Nehemia, “The Early States of the Western Sudan to 1500” in Ajayi, A.F.J. and Crowder, Michael, eds., History of West Africa I (New York, 1972), 120–57.Google Scholar

6. Bovill, E.W., The Golden Trade of the Moors (London, 1957/1968)Google Scholar; Boahen, A. Adu, “The Caravan Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” JAH, 3 (1962), 349–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., Britain, the Sahara, and the Western Sudan, 1788-1861 (Oxford, 1964); Johnson, Marion, “The Nineteenth-Century Gold ‘Mitqal’ in West and North Africa,” JAH, 9 (1968), 547–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mauny, , Tableau, esp. 29-37, 357–67 et passim.Google ScholarNewbury, C.W., “North African and Western Sudan (sic) Trade in the Nineteenth Century: A Revaluation,” JAH, 7 (1966), 233–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewicki, Tadeusz, “L'état nord-africain de Tahert et ses relations avec le Soudan occidental à la fin du Vile et au IXe siècles,” Etnografia Polska, 8 (1964), 291–311Google Scholar; idem., “Quelques extraits inédits relatifs aux voyages des commerçants et des missionnaires ibadites nord africains au pays du Soudan occidental au Moyên Age,” Folia Orientalia, 2 (1960), 1-28.

7. See, for example, Griffeth, Robert R., “Varieties of African Resistance to the French conquest of the Western Sudan, 1850-1900” (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1968).Google Scholar

8. E.g., Diallo, Fodo, “Environment et développement dans la région de Kayes (Mali),” (M.A., Université de Laval, 1981)Google Scholar; Schulman, Gwendolyn, “Colonial Education for African Girls in Afrique Occidentale Française: a project for Gender Reconstruction, 1819-1960” (Ph.D., McGill, 1992).Google Scholar

9. Zoghby, Samir M., “The Impact of the Western Sudanic Empires on the Trans-Saharan Trade: Tenth to Sixteenth Century” (Ph.D., Georgetown, 1966)Google Scholar; Colvin, Lucie Gallistel, “The Commerce of Hausaland, 1788-1833” (M.A., Columbia University, 1967)Google Scholar; Baier, Stephen, “African Merchants in the Colonial Period: a History of Commerce in Damagaram, Central Niger, 1880-1960” (Ph.D., Wisconsin, 1974)Google Scholar; McDougall, E. Anne, “The Ijil Salt Industry: Its Role in the Pre-Colonial Economy of the Western Sudan” (Ph.D., Birmingham, 1980).Google Scholar

10. Manning, Patrick, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (Cambridge, 1990).Google ScholarLovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Lovejoy, Paul and Richardson, David, “Competing Markets for Male and Female Slaves: Prices in the Interior of West Africa, 1780-1850,” IJAHS, 28 (1995), 261–93Google Scholar; McDougall, E. Anne, “Camel Caravans of the Saharan Salt Trade: Traders and Transporters in the Nineteenth Century” in Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine and Lovejoy, Paul E., eds., The Workers of African Trade (Beverly Hills, 1985)Google Scholar; idem., “The Sahara Reconsidered: Pastoralists, Politics, and Salt From the Ninth Through the Twelfth Centuries,” African Economic History, 12 (1983), 263-86; idem., “The View From Awadaghost: War, Trade, and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara From the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century,” JAH 26 (1985), 1-31; idem, “Salts of the Western Sahara: Myths, Mysteries, and Historical Significance,” IJAHS, 23 (1990), 231-57; Savage, Elizabeth, ed., The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London, 1992).Google Scholar

11. For a less successful treatment see Meillassoux, Claude, Maidens, Meal, and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, from Femmes, Greniers et Capitaux (Paris, 1975).Google Scholar For a more complex treatment see Moore, Henrietta and Vaughan, Megan, Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1994)Google Scholar; Schmidt, Elizabeth, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939 (London, 1992).Google Scholar

12. The jo rituals, found in one form or another throughout most of the Mande world, have as their goal the conservation and harnessing of spiritual energies enhancing terrestrial and social stability and continuity. Divided into six great associations (male only), jo rituals include the ntomo, the kono, the tyiwara, and the kore. The komo and nama associations, likewise members of the jo, honor the ancestors and serve the diviner's energies respectively.

13. (Bloomington, 1993).

14. Herbert suggests that this polarity may be more loosely incorporated into a “more multi-dimensional dialogue that also includes iron, copper and maybe even silver.” (Personal communication, 12 November 1995). I tend to disagree, given that other ores seldom appeared in komo rituals (see below), as well as that the salt-gold commercial partnership was an ancient one. The antiquity—if that is the correct term—of the gendered cosmology is unknown.

15. According to Ibn Khaldun, the Moroccan ruler invaded Taghaza, then under Songhay control. Seizing the salt mines, he ousted incumbent traders, thereby effectively extending Moroccan commercial interests deep into the Sahara.

16. Perinbam, B. Marie, “Notes on Dyula Origins and Nomenclature,” BIFAN, 36B, (1974), 767–90.Google Scholar

17. Gold deposits were also found in the Galam-Bambuk-Tambaura regions, in the Southern Rivers, Sierre Leone, northern Guinea, the Guerze country in western Côte d'Ivoire, the Pura mines of Burkina Faso, the mines of northern Benin and Nigeria, and the Akan mines in Ghana. Scattered outcroppings were also found elsewhere—on the Manding Plateau, the Beledugu, etc.

18. For example, in his Kitab al-Zij and Qasida, al-Fazari (second part of the eighth century) was the first to comment on the West African gold trade, and to associate it with the Soninke state of Ghana. See Cuoq, Joseph, Recueil des sources arabes concernant l'Afrique occidentale du VIIIe siècle (Paris, 1975), 40.Google Scholar The second to mention gold in relation to the state of Ghana was al-Masʿudi (d. 956/57) in his Muruj al-dhahab. The third was Ibn Hawqal (d. 988) in his Kitab surat al-ard. Among the last of the Arab authors to mention West African gold was al-Shammakhi (d. 1522). In repeating the drought and conversion story affecting a Malian king, first reported by al-Bakri, al-Shammakhi's Kitab al-siyar referred to Ghana's “great king” and his twelve gold mines. See Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 32, 40, 82, 368.Google Scholar

19. An abundance of European and West African archival sources substantiate this claim. For a short discussion see Curtin, Philip D., “The Lure of Bambouk Gold,” JAH, 14 (1973), 629–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Perinbam, B. Marie, “The Political Organization of Traditional Gold Mining: The Western Loby, c. 1850 to c. 1910,” JAH, 29 (1988), 437–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Perinbam, B. Marie, “The Julas in Western Sudanese History: Long-Distance Traders and Developers of Resources” in Swartz, B. K. and Dumett, R. E., eds., West African Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (The Hague, 1980), 463–65Google Scholar; for Binger's experience of a ja-tigiw at Kong see Binger, Louis, Du Niger au Golfs du Guinée (2 vols.: Paris, 1892), 1:291Google Scholar; idem., “Le péril de l'lslam,” Bulletin du Comité d'Études Historiques et Scientifiques de l'AOF, (hereafter BCEHSAOF), Renseignement Coloniaux, 11 (1903), 92-93.

22. Archives Nationales Maliennes à Koulouba (hereafter ANMK) 3Q 3 “Mines Renseignement sur les Régions aurifères du Bambouk 1896,” n.p.; ANMK 3Q 12 “Rapport sur le mouvement minier dans la colonie du Haut-Sénégal-Niger, 1909, considérations générales, Bambouk et Lobi,” p. 3; ANMK 3Q 13 “Rapport sur l'industrie miniére du Haut-Sénégal-Niger (1910), pp. 3-4.

23. For a very good discussion of epochal climatic changes throughout the western Sudan see Brooks, George E., Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630 (Boulder, 1993), chapter 1 et passim.Google Scholar

24. Archives Nationales Section Outre-Mer, (hereafter ANSOM), Sén. III Doc. 1 “Mollien” (Paris 8 July, 1819), pp. 6-7; ANSOM Sén. et Dép. IV Doss. 90 Bis Vallière Rapport” (Kangaba 5 March, 1888), p. 6; ANSOM Sén. et Dép. IV Doss. 90 Bis Vallière “Mémoire” (Siguiri 15-25 March, 1888), p. 43. For food shortages in Bambuhu see ANMK Rép. Géog. 3Q 3 “Mines” (1896), n.p.; ANMK 3Q 12 “Rapport” (1909), p. 2; ANMK 3Q 13 “Rapport” (1910), pp. 3-4.

25. Perinbam, , “Political Organization,” 440–43.Google Scholar

26. Herodotus, , Histories, IV.Google Scholar For the Arab authors see Cuoq, Recueil, Levtzion/Hopkins, Corpus. According to Raymond Mauny, the trade's beginnings can be traced to sometime during the last millennium BC, to the late third or early fourth century of the present era according to Timothy Garrard. Mauny, Raymond, “Essai sur l'histoire des métaux en Afrique occidentale,” BIFAN, 14 (1952), 550–52Google Scholar; Garrard, Timothy F., “Myth and Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade,” JAH, 23 (1982), 443–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Park, Mungo, The Travels of Mungo Park (London, 1907), 179, 181-82, 214.Google Scholar

28. ANMK 3 Q 13, “Rapport” (1910); ANMK 3 Q 12, “Rapport” (1909). For a discussion of gold-mining techniques see Curtin, Philip, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975), 203–06Google Scholar; Méniaud, Jacques, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (2 vols.: Paris, 1912), 2:175–79Google Scholar; Kiéthéga, Jean-Baptiste, L'or de la Volta noire (Paris, 1983), 89–98Google Scholar; Savonnet, G., “Habitations souterraines bobo ou anciens puits de mines en pays wile?” BIFAN, 36B (1974), 227–45Google Scholar; Sagatzky, J., “La géologie et les resources minières de la Haute-Volta méridionale,” Bulletin de la Direction des Mines, A.O.F., no. 13 (1954).Google Scholar

29. Perinbam, B. Marie, “Perceptions of Bonduku's Contribution to the Western Sudanese Gold Trade: an Assessment of the Evidence,” HA, 13 (1986), 295–322, esp. 298Google Scholar; idem., “Julas,” 460-61; Wilks, Ivor, “Wangara, Akan, and the Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” JAH, 23 (1982), 346nn66-68.Google Scholar See also Kiéthéga, , Or, 159–62.Google Scholar According to Raymond Mauny, Black Volta miners learned gold-mining skills from the Kulango, who in turn learned from Bonduku settlers (who may have been proto-Juula), and who in turn may have learned from the Asante. Mauny, , Tableau géographique, 297.Google Scholar For Akan mining techniques see Garrard, Timothy F., Akan Weights and the Gold Trade (London, 1980), 127–70.Google Scholar For a further discussion of Mande influences on Akan mining technology see Herbert, Eugenia W., Red Gold in Africa; Copper in Precolonial History and Culture (Madison, 1984), 299–300.Google Scholar

30. ANMK 3 Q 7, “Rapports du Capitaine A. Ruby sur les gisements aurifières du Lobi” (28 Feb., 1901); Méniaud, , Haut-Sénégal-Niger, 2:197.Google Scholar

31. The expanding gold market attributed to increasing European coastal demands was probably a factor in breaking down this numu mining exclusivity. Also interview Massa Makan Diabaté (Bamako 21 March 1983).

32. ANMK 3 Q 7, “Rapport du Capitaine A. Ruby.” This form of prospecting is similar to that recounted by Mansa Musa to his interlocutor Ibn Amir Hajib in Cairo in 1324/25, al-ʿUmari, , Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar, in Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 267.Google Scholar

33. Eugenia Herbert, personal communication.

34. ANMK 3 Q 7, “Mines: rapport sur les gisements aurifières du Lobi;” ANMK 3 Q 12 “Rapport” (1909).

35. ANMK 3 Q 3, “Mines: renseignement sur les régions aurifères du Bambouk” (1816); ANMK 3 Q 12, “Rapport” (1909). Al-ʿUmari was one of the first to make this observation: Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 262.Google Scholar See also Perinbam, , “Political Organization,” 444.Google Scholar For a discussion of the association of gold and other metals with the occult see Herbert, , Red Gold, 277-95, 297–99.Google Scholar

36. Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 178.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 43, 76, 77, 100, 107, 118, 142, 168, 169, 178, 184, 211, 282, 319, 414n4.

38. Raffenel, Anne-Jean-Baptiste, Nouveau Voyage dans le pays des Négres suivi d'Études sur la Colonie du Sénégal et de Documents historiques géographiques et scientifiques (2 vols.: Paris, 1856), 1:453.Google Scholar

39. Interview with El Hajj Mamadou Makadji, Banamba, 12 April 1983. El Hajj Mamadou Makadji was born in Kabida, a Sahelian oasis, ca. 1913 of Suraka (or “Moorish”) identity. His was the fourth generation involved in the salt-gold trade. Mamadou Makadji traveled mainly between Banamba and Kulikoro.

40. Interview with Massa Makan Diabaté, Bamako, 21 March 1983. Elsewhere in the old Mande, the perspective varied depending on the region: in some, gold was a masculine principle, while silver was the female counterpart. Camara, Seydou, “Le Manden des origines à Sunjata.” Mémoire de fin d'études en histoire-géographie, École Normale Supérieure (Bamako, 1977–1978), 56.Google Scholar

41. There is a rich literature on the existence (or otherwise) of Wagadu, including suggestive archeological data. Associated with ancient Ghana on the Mauritanian-Malian-Senegalese border, Wagadu could have been a Mande social construct, or a survival or revival in the Mande historical imagination, or simply an elusive cultural concept without time-space considerations, although a location in the western Sahel seems feasible. For a different view see Pollet, Eric and Winter, Grace, La société Soninké (Dyahunu, Mali) (Brussels, 1971), 25–28.Google Scholar

42. Interview with Guimbu Djakité from the Manden, Bamako, 3 January 1983; interview with Diarra Sylla, Bamako, 15 March 1983. Diarra Sylla was born ca. 1938; he is a “traditionalist.” See also Siossat, P., “Les coutumes des orpailleurs indigènes du Maramandougou,” BCEHSAOF, 20 (1937), 336–49.Google Scholar

43. See Cissé, Youssouf Tata and Kamissoko, Wa, La grande geste du Mali des origines à la fondalion de l'empire (Paris, 1988), 241Google Scholar; interview with Thiémoko Kanté, Bamako, 4 January 1983; Archives Nationales Sénégalaises de l'Afrique Occidentale Française (hereafter ASAOF) 1G 50 Gallieni, et Vallière, “Notes sur la situation politique des peuplades des vallées du Bafing, du Bakoy et du Haut-Niger,” Bamako, 9 May 1880, 30Google Scholar; Cissé, Youssouf Tata, ed., Histoire du Boucle du Niger: Actes du Colloque, Troisième Colloque International de L'Association SCOA, Niamey, 30 November-6 December 1977, 13.Google Scholar

44. Interview with Thiémoko Kanté, Bamako, 4 January 1983.

45. ASAOF, 1G 32 “Lettre Mage à M. Le Gouv,” Saint-Louis, 21 June 1866.

46. Interview with Famale Cissoko, a miner, Bamako, 20 April 1983. All family members going back several generations, including women, were miners. Niane, Djibril Tamsir, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (London, 1965), 78.Google Scholar

47. Interview with Massa Makan Diabaté, Bamako, 21 March, 1983.

48. Interview with Famale Cissoko, a miner, Bamako, 20 April 1983.

49. Elsewhere Kamissoko calls Mansa Musa's identity into question, claiming that three Mali chiefs of that name have survived in the traditions (Ibn Khaldun named only two). According to Ibn Khaldun, it was one of the Mansa's successors, who died in 1373/74, who squandered the nation's patrimony. Cissé, , Actes, 8, 12-13, 15, 17, 20, 21Google Scholar; Cissé, /Kamissoko, , Grande geste, 25, 30, 181n47, 199n12, 215n24, 237–43Google Scholar; interview of Sidy Diabaté with Wa Kamissoko, ca. 1973-74, in Diabaté, Sidy, “Kankou Moussa Empereur du Mali,” Mémoire de fin d'études en histoire-géographie, École Normale Supérieure (Bamako, 1973–1974), 52–53Google Scholar; see also Dieterlen, Germaine and Cissé, Youssouf, Les fondements de la société d'initiation du Komo (Paris, 1972), 39Google Scholar; Khaldun, Ibn, Histoire des Berbères et des dynasties musulmanes de l'Afrique du Septentrionale (4 vols.: Paris, 1969), 2:114–16.Google Scholar

50. Tauxier, Louis, La religion bambara (Paris, 1927), 280.Google Scholar

51. Legend attributed to Wa Kamissoko of Kirina, recounted by Thiémoko Kanté, Bamako, 4 January, 1983.

52. Agricultural fetes at Bamako (sometimes calling for gold to be cast into the Niger) usually involved encounters between a virgin and the Niger crocodiles, the blacksmith's tana. In addition to being a prohibition, a tana demonstrated the spiritual and material continuity between the animal and human worlds. The tana is widespread throughout the western Sudan. Among the Wolof it is called bang; ouada among the Fulbe; kossé among the Soninke; kabi among the Songhay; and kisgu among the Mossi. See also Cissé, /Kamissoko, , Grande geste, 79n43, 99n12, 177, 179, 181, 199-201, 203, 205n17, 211, 241n16, 249, 291Google Scholar; Niane, , Sundiata, 67, 73–78, 94n66Google Scholar; Delafosse, Maurice, Haut-Sénégal-Niger (2 vols.: Paris, 1912), 1:292, 321Google Scholar; 2:168-70, 179. For Faro the river spirit see Dieterlen, Germaine, Essai sur la religion bambara (Paris, 1950), 40–55.Google Scholar

53. For the place of gold in family rites see Tauxier, , Religion, 289-302, 355–470.Google Scholar

54. Mauny, , Tableau géographique, 300–01.Google Scholar

55. Susan McIntosh, Keech, ed., Excavations at Jenne-jeno, Kaniana, and Hambarketolo. The 1981 Season (Berkeley, 1995).Google Scholar

56. References more specifically are to the “Bambara” in the cercle. ANMK ID 38 3 “Etudes générales: monographie du Cercle de Djenné 1909” (Study based on summary monographs) (Jenne, 1909), 10, 24, 102; Gallieni, Joseph-Simon, Mission d'exploration du Haut-Niger: Voyage au Soudan Française, Haut-Niger et pays de Ségou, 1879-1881 (Paris, 1885), 429–30Google Scholar; Perinbam, B. Marie, “Islam in the Banamba region of the eastern Beledugu, c. 1800- c, 1900,” IJAHS, 19 (1986), 639, 651, 655Google Scholar; Raffenel, Nouveau voyage, 1:423, 428; ANMK 1D 33 no. 4 F. Rougier, J. L. “Enquête sur l'Islam dans le Cercle de Bamako” (Banamba, 31 May 1914).Google Scholar

57. Perinbam, , “Julas,” 465–66.Google Scholar

58. One ratl equals 397.2 grams. Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 80, 110, 132, 177, 212, 262Google Scholar; interview with Thiémoko Kanté, Bamako, 4 January 1983.

59. Interview with Tiemoko Coulubaly, Kangaba, 13 April 1983.

60. It is also likely that gold had a non-market value in certain types of exchanges in Timbuktu: Levtzion, /Hopkins, , Corpus, 81, 267.Google Scholar

61. Archives Nationales Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Afrique. et colonies françaises, 1780-1882, vol. 11, “Mémoire servant à donner de renseignement sur le pays des mines que nous apellons Bambouk,” 24. For Gallieni's account of a komo ceremony at Siby in the Mande south of Bamako, and at Nango in the Beledugu, see Gallieni, , Voyage, 324–34.Google Scholar

62. Personal communication, Mamadou Sarr, Bamako, 3 November 1982; personal communication, Massa Makan Diabaté, Bamako, 21 March 1983; interview with Diarra Sylla, goldworker, Bamako, 15 May 1983.

63. Not that Herbert had argued for their gendering after transformation.