Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 82
moved to Doulo under Sankre during the early 17th century. Official Islamisation took place
about 100 years later, during the early 18th century under king Bukar (Forkl ibid).
It is not known how long the various rules of our twelve Wandala kings of Kirawa lasted, and
we do not make extra allowances for those who succeeded as brothers, so we can only guess.
Between Akutafa Dafla and Sankre there are three rulers, which allows for only very short
ruling periods, perhaps no more than between ten and twenty years each. Unfortunately we
cannot be sure, but can make an informed guess that Kirawa might well have existed with
eight kings (four of them brothers) for between 150 and 250 years before its siege by the
Borno king, which Ibn Furtu reports in 1576. This would bring us to at least 1400 or even
earlier, perhaps the mid-14th century, which would be around 1350AD.
There is another important early source we need to mention in this context: the Venetian
mapmaker Fra Mauro, who, shortly before 1450AD, was the first to mention the name
'mandera' (Mandara) on his mappa mundi (Falchetta 2006). This was 125 years before Ibn
Furtu and 75 years before Leo Africanus. Neither Leo nor Fra Mauro mentions Kirawa, but
we assume, based on the kings' list extracted from the Wandala Chronicles, that both refer to
the early Wandala state with Kirawa as its capital. Kirawa, located to the immediate
northeastern foot of the Gwoza hills, was, therefore, perhaps throughout the 15th and much of
the 16th century, a not unimportant regional centre of trans-Saharan trade. Why else would
Fra Mauro include them on his mappa mundi, together with other early mentions, like 'mergi'
(Margi) and 'bagemi' (Bagirmi), which Falchetta lists as important places south of Lake
Chad?
The above raises the question of the nature of the relationship of the early Wandala state to
the populations of the Gwoza hills, but before we do that we want to introduce the DGB sites
and show that they could well have developed historically in tandem or shortly before the
Wandala decided to leave Ishge Kawe and make Kirawa their capital. Our sources suggest
both the foundation of Kirawa as Wandala capital and the development of the DGB sites as
early evidence for terrace agriculture, sharing as they do a subregional and historical past.
They were most likely affected by the same climate emergency: great aridity during the first
half of the 15th century, following a very long period of humidity (see also Figure 16).
The contemporaneity of the DGB sites
The first mention of the two main DGB sites (DGB1 and DGB2) was by the French
geographer Christian Seignobos (1982), but during one of my main field periods (1987), I
discovered several more, albeit smaller ones, and collected local legends about their origins.
One of the main points my Mafa friends made in that context was that they were not of Mafa
origin, but belonged to the people who lived in the area before their arrival. I also established
that they were generally referred to in the Mafa language as diy geɗ biy (diy=eye; geɗ=head;
biy=chief), meaning 'eye of the chief on top', and we have already mentioned that DGB is an
abbreviation of this. The word diy in this context, is most likely a reference of supernatural
'overseeing', similar to diy mbulom (mbulom = shrine) as a general word for an ancestor
shrine, which refers to a ritual function. The reference 'overseeing' as it is here represented by
diy, in addition to geɗ for 'being on top of the mountain' and for biy or bay for 'chief', suggests
a role as a site of former chiefly significance in the action of ritual overseeing.
The Mafa of the DGB area claim that the 'Godaliy' were the people who built them. Godaliy
is the Mafa ethnonym for the Dghweɗe, but as we will discover in Part Three, they had even
less of a chiefly tradition than the Mafa, who had at least some of that tradition (MullerKosack 2003). We will however discover that the Dghweɗe have a tradition of origin, which
sets out that like them the Wandala originally came from Tur. However, neither the Godaliy
nor the Tur tradition seem to be early enough to justify a connection with the early DGB sites.
As we will learn in Part Three, the Dghweɗe claim that the Wandala once lived in Kunde,
which is a subunit of Ghwa'a, but again this is all very apocryphal and does not support any
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