Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 101
Abalasaka and we have established that he became the first Wandala king residing
permanently in Kirawa. The rule of Abalasaka's son Bira Misa was the period we have
marked in our Table of Contemporaneity as the beginning of an extreme arid period, which
not only resulted in the development of Kirawa as first capital of Wandala, but also brought
about the beginning of the DGB complex. We used the earliest written source of the Venetian
mapmaker Fra Mauro to underpin our hypothesis, since he is the first to mention the Wandala
in the mid-15th century.
We do not know the age of the legend of Zedima and the 'roots of the sun', and the legendary
account of Katala-Wandala, but they are both linked to Ghwa'a. The first one about the role of
Durghwe as the main most northerly mountain shrine in our subregion, and the second one
citing Tala Wandala as an early place where the Wandala allegedly settled, was apparently
before the formation of Korana Basa. We hypothesised earlier that Ghwa'a might have
already existed during the second severe arid period of the late 16th century, when Umar's
brother is mentioned as 'usurper' by Ibn Furtu. We pointed out that it is difficult to imagine
that the DGB complex was not known by Umar's brother, and the idea that he might have
revitalised or even enhanced it is suggested by the impressive remains of DGB1, while DGB2
was more likely linked to the first severe drought about hundred years earlier. We also
hypothesised that perhaps during the second period of aridity, the sophistication of early
terrace cultivation connected to sorghum and dung production had by then reached the Gwoza
hills, and that a ritual link between Kirawa and Ghwa'a might have existed.
We are painfully aware of how speculative our hypothetical suggestions are. Nevertheless,
our two legends support the attempt to retell a legendary oral history from the grassroots. For
example, in the light of her reproductive bond with Zedima, the loyalty of Wandala's daughter
to her montagnard husband is important to acknowledge. We do not know whether our
Katala-Wandala from the hills was in legendary terms a representation of Katala, or perhaps
Zegda. According to the Wandala Chronicles, the Katala legend was the older one, and we
realise that her story goes back to a time long before the Wandala moved their capital to
Kirawa and before the first DGB site was constructed.
There is one final point we want to make. We know that, according to our Table of
Contemporaneity, this early period of the Wandala was most likely during the long wet period
that was coming to an end in the late 14th century. Still, perhaps the legend of Katala survived
as a legend of the hills independently of the Wandala Chronicles, and somehow became
incorporated into the traditions of origin from Tur. It might have been renewed, and as such
was orally linked to the latest south-to-north migration in our mountains/plains subregion of
the northwestern Mandara Mountains of the 17th century.
Conclusion
This chapter shows that the early written sources on the importance of the Wandala fail to
give us any reliable hint concerning a possible historical relationship between the populations
of the Gwoza hills and the emerging Wandala state, except perhaps that the Wandala state had
its capital in Kirawa at a very early time. This does not mean that there were no such early
relations between the two. The written sources place such a possible scenario in the 16th
century, but there is strong circumstantial oral historical and archaeological evidence that
such a relationship might well already have existed considerably earlier. We can even
speculate that Kirawa was not only conceived as a place from preexisting places in the plains
further north, but also to its mountainous south. The Ziver-Oupay massif and the Tur heights
as well as the Gwoza hills with its foothills and adjacent plains, all being affected by similar
regional climate emergencies, sets the subregional background scenario of our Dghweɗe oral
history retold.
We have produced a Table of Contemporaneity to illustrate this, but so far have only touched
on legendary narratives from Dghweɗe, which show that perhaps any ethnoarchaeological
99
