A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold

Bibliographic Data

ID8979174
AuthorsSusan Keech Mcintosh (0000-0002-2082-7721, Rice University, corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume22
Issue2
Pages145-158
Publication date1981-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s002185370001937x
OpenAlexW2104437668
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited11

There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of Gold provided in the original sources can be shown to apply more convincingly to the Inland Niger Delta than to Bambuk/Bure. Until now, this hypothesis has not received serious consideration, partly because of the belief that the Inland Delta and its most important entrepot, Jenne, did not play a significant role in long-distance trade networks until the fourteenth century. This is contradicted by archaeological evidence for a major urban centre at Jenne-jeno by 900 a.d. The existence in the later first millennium a.d. of the Soninke town of Jenne-jeno, and the oral traditions which maintain that the western Inland Delta was the heartland of the Soninke trade diaspora, combine to indicate that commerce along the Middle Niger was substantial by the early second millennium. Indirect confirmation of this trading activity is found both in al-Bakri's discussion of riverine trade routes along the upper Niger Bend and in al-Idrisi's account of the Wangara along the Middle Niger. The continuing identification of the Inland Niger Delta region as the Island of Gold from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries implies that part of this trade involved gold. A possible early gold source in Lobi is suggested

Ancient history · Archaeology · Delta · Diaspora · Eleventh · Ethnology · Geography · Niger delta · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African Studies and Geopolitics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · History

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