The Wind of Change in the Western Sahara
1964; Wiley; Volume: 130; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1794260
ISSN1475-4959
Autores Tópico(s)Agriculture and Rural Development Research
ResumoThe senegal river is the threshold of two worlds. To the south is the rich, assertive, teeming world of 'Afrique Noire'. To the north are empty savannas, gum forests, dunes and mountains stretching as far as the Saguia el Hamra (Saqiya al-Hamra0) to the far north and Timbuktu to the east. It is the world of the herdsman and his herds, the merchant and his caravan, the scholar and his manuscripts, where no change of any kind seemed thinkable in the worst of all possible environments and where the despairing cry of the Moorish poet, Muhammad uld Shaykh Sidya, seemed ever to repeat itself?'My stay is prolonged, only by the choice of the Almighty, not my own. I had no intention of making my abode there, but the hand of destiny east me there. The heart grows weary of its cold and its humidity and its raw damp wastelands, weary of its pebbles like sharp knives and trees like dagger points.' The Western Sahara has known vast changes through the centuries. The Sene? gal river is not a cultural barrier; 'Afrique Noire' once extended far to the north of it. In the Hodh (Hawd), the Soninke kingdom of Ghana and the Lamtuna centre of Awdaghust belonged in their cultural and commercial links to the Sudan, as much as they did to the Islamic world of the north. The pull of 'Afrique Noire' was to persist long after the seizure ofthe Soninke capital in 1067 by the Almoravids and the emigration of its merchants to Oualata (Walata) in 1224. South-west Mauritania until the end of the eleventh century was under the rule of Takrur (Takrur) and formed part of the country of Takrur, and vast tracts of eastern Mauritania were part of the Mandinka empire of Mali. Sudanic languages were widely used, and to this day the Soninke Azayr dialect is spoken by a few Moors and others in Tichitt (Tishit), Oualata and Ouadane (Wadan), while along the north? ern banks of the Senegal river, the Shamama, there are settlements of Toucouleur and Sarakolle.
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