Al-Bakri

The Southern and Eastern Borders of Hungary in the Second Half of the 10th Century (according to the DAI, a text of al-Bakri and the accounts about Black Hungary)
Constantine Porphyrogennetos describes in the De Administrando Imperio the political realities at the Lower Danube (Ister) of the year 950. Modern interpretations of the text show a wide range of conflicting opinions when drawing a map based on the emperor’s words. Where ends Hungary (Turkia), and starts Bulgaria and the Pecheneg lands? Modern interpreters did not seem to take into consideration that the emperor should have been working from maps and itineraries also. Taking this into consideration, it clearly appears that the Pecheneg lands do not begin from “opposite of Distra” (as it was mistranslated), but from above the Danube-delta. In this case, for whom belonged present-day Muntenia and Moldova (west of the Siret valley): to Hungarians or Bulgarians? A parallel examination of a text by al-Bakri and of the accounts about Black Hungary shows that we have to put in this area a population closely connected (yet different) to Hungarians: they are the so-called Scythians of the 9-10th century Byzantine writings.

The current work realizes a historic approach to the region of Western Africa that is traditionally designated Bilād al-Sūdān (“Country of Black People”).
This wide region, which dues to the present regions of Sahara, Mauritania, Mali and- according to the classical resources too- the Kingdom of Ghana, has waken up much interest in it in the last years between the European experts and North American ones.
To develop it, I’m focused on the work of the geographer al-Bakrī (d. 487 / 1094), Kitāb al-masālik wa-l-mamālik that, in some passages, he does a historic description of this space across the evidences he received. It treats essentially of the regions of Awdaġust, Siŷilmāsa and Ghana, which will let me study the Islamization of the region whose presence gives evidence of the almoravid dynasty especially, just like that the study of the tribal society an its traditional characteristics.

Keywords: al-Bakrī, Kitāb al masālik wa al-mamālik, Bilād al-Sūdān, Awdaġust, Siŷilmāsa, Ghana, Medieval Maghreb.

Within historical sources, the Almoravids are synonymous with uncivilized tribal brutality, foreignness, and a naive understanding of Islam that leads to grave theological error.  Almohad theologians accused the Almoravids of anthropomorphizing God, Ibn Athīr emphasized the presence of facial veiling among Saharan males as an inversion of gender norms, and Ibn Khaldūn argued that the Almoravids fell from power after succumbing to decadence.  Due to a heavy reliance on these and other, detailed but non-Almoravid era sources, modern scholarship has hitherto failed to recognize the orthodox positions espoused by its founder ‘Abd Allāh ibn Yāsīn, such as the centrality of a Muslim’s submission to religious authority over secular authority, the application of Qur’anic punishments for specific misdeeds, and the application of Islamic law to warfare and property.  Through a careful exploration of our only extant Almoravid-era source material, al-Bakrī’s Kitab al Masālik wa-‘l-Mamālik and Qāḍī Iyāḍ’s Tartīb al-Madārick wa Taqrib al-Masālik,” this paper will demonstrate how integral these Islamic
practices were to the development of Almoravid theology and identity and how this identity continued until the movement’s downfall in 1149.