Bornu

The seventeenth century was a period of major social change in central sudanic Africa. Islam spread from royal courts to rural communities, leading to new identities, new boundaries and new tasks for experts of the religion. Addressing these issues, the Bornu scholar Muḥammad al-Wālī acquired an exceptional reputation. Dorrit van Dalen’s study places him within his intellectual environment, and portrays him as responding to the concerns of ordinary Muslims. It shows that scholars on the geographical margins of the Muslim world participated in the debates in the centres of Muslim learning of the time, but on their own terms. Al-Wālī’s work also sheds light on a century in the Islamic history of West Africa that has until now received little attention.

Bu çalışma, Bornu tarihi ile ilgili Nijerya’da yetişmiş önemli ilmî şahsiyetlerden biri olan Ali Kyari Benî Şeyh tarafından yazılmış bir makalenin çevirisidir ve 19. yüzyılda Osmanlı-Bornu münasebetlerini siyasi ve iktisadi bağlamda ele almaktadır. Çevirinin en önemli hususiyeti, Afrika tarihinin belli bir kesitindeki ikili diplomatik ilişkileri, yerel bir tarihçinin perspektifinden Libya Milli Arşivi’ndeki tarihi belgeler ışığında sunmasıdır. Bu bağlamda Trablusgarp ile Bornu arasındaki ticarî bağların işlevselliğini koruduğu müddetçe Sahra transit ticaretinin canlılığını muhafaza ettiği ve bu sayede yerel halkın müreff eh bir hayata kavuştuğu ancak bölgeye Avrupa sömürgeciliğinin gelişiyle birlikte var olan bu güçlü ilişkiler ağının tamamen alt-üst olduğu anlaşılmaktadır.

This study is the translation of the article written by Ali Kyari Bani Sheikh who is the one the most important scholarly persons grown in Nigeria about the history of Bornu and the article is handling the relations between Ottoman and Bornu in the political and financial context in 19th century. The most important characteristic of the translation is the representation of bilateral relations in a determined section of African history in the perspective of a local historian in consideration of historical documents founded in National Archive of Libya. In this regard, it is understood that as long as commercial relations between Bornu and Tripolitania protect their functionalities, the transit trade of Sahara preserves its aliveness and thus local societies arrives at prosperous life but with the arrival of European Colonialism to the region, the network of these existing relations are destructed.