A French map showing where Masina (Macina) was in relation to present-day countries of West Africa. It is the blue blob towards the middle.
Masina (1818-1862), also known as Macina or the Massina Empire, was one of the main Fulani jihad states of West Africa in the early 1800s. It ruled what is now the middle of Mali.
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Fulani women of the Masina region in 1970.
Location: along the Niger River, from about Jenne to Timbuktu.
- Population: 1 million (estimated).
- Languages: Fulfulde, Bambara, Songhay, Dogon languages.
- Religions: Islam, Bambara polytheism, etc.
- Capital: Hamdallahi.
- Major cities: Timbuktu, Jenne, shadows of their former selves.
- Government: A caliphate (Islamic state) divided into five emirates (provinces). Emirs were chosen by the caliph. The caliph was chosen by jihad or civil war. He was advised by a grand council of 40 men, whose advice he did not always take. The government collected taxes. Justice was dispensed by cadis, judges learned in sharia (Muslim law). They applied sharia to everything, with a strictness some would call fanatical.
- Economy: Grew plenty of rice, millet and vegetables on government lands worked by men taken in war. Freedom was promised to slaves in its jihads, but Masina itself practised slavery of non-Muslims (as allowed by the Koran). Trade was weak due to war. Most Fulanis were herders. The government, with some success, got them to live a more settled life.
Rulers:
- 1818-45: Amadou Seku – saintly scholar, preacher of pure Islam and jihad.
- 1845-53: Seku Amadou – able son.
- 1853-62: Amadou mo Amadou – hopeless incompetent.
Amadou Seku was a religious scholar with a large following, one who was able to bring together Fulanis of the Masina kingdom to fight a jihad (holy war) to overthrow their hated (and non-Muslim) Bambara overlords. Seku was a follower of Usman dan Fodio, the founder of Sokoto, the Fulani jihad state that was downriver in what is now northern Nigeria.
Seku Amadou, the son, after putting down challenges, both foreign and domestic, to his rule, gave Masina its most peaceful and prosperous days of the 1800s.
Amadou mo Amadou was unable to heal the divisions of the civil war that put him in power. In fact, he made them worse by putting his own men in place of old and respected religious leaders. And then faced a powerful jihad state growing in the west, the Toucouleur Empire (Kaarta) of al-Hajj Umar Tall. Amadou made an alliance with the Bambara of Segu, the once-hated and still un-Islamic former enemies. That gave Umar the perfect excuse to launch a holy war against him.
The end: the Toucouleur Empire could make guns in quantity, Masina could not. Masina fell in 1862. The Toucoulear Empire in turn fell in 1893 to a yet bigger empire with yet better guns: the French.
The Islam of Masina was very pure and strict, inspired in part by Wahhabism, which today rules Mecca and Medina and helps to inform the Islam of jihadists like ISIS, the Taliban and Boko Haram. Masina’s Islam was much more severe than Timbuktu’s own scholarly understanding of the faith, so much so that people in Timbuktu had to hide their books from the jihadists. Yet it was Timbuktu’s own Mukhtar al-Kunti (1729-1811) whose writings had helped give rise to the Fulani jihads!
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- l’empire peul du Macina – is what it is called in French. There seems to be more about it in French than in English.
- Islam
- the older, larger empires that ruled Timbuktu:
- Timbuktu
- Inna Modja: Tombouctou – a music video in Bambara
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Come on Abagond, your propensity to lean heavily towards Islam is beginning to show. Tell the full story. Did the jihadists conduct this violently sadistic act against themselves? The Black Jews were living in this same area for over 1,000 years prior to being overran by jihadists and subsequently loaded onto slave ships bound for the Americas. You are much more humorist than I first thought!
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Wow! That is some lavish adornment on the Fulani woman in the post image. Great intricacy and style from her headdress, huge gold earrings and pendant to the lovely embroidery on the front of her gown. Looks great against her coffee colored skin.
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“Masina’s Islam was much more severe than Timbuktu’s own scholarly understanding of the faith, so much so that people in Timbuktu had to hide their books from the jihadists.”
What is it with religious fanatics wanting to destroy everything? The Saudi’s have been criticized for tearing down Khadija’s [first wife of the Prophet Muhammad] house in Mecca. The destruction of historical sites in Mecca has been extensive. One commentator linked the wholesale demolitions to ideology:
http://theartnewspaper.com/comment/comment/why-is-saudi-arabia-destroying-the-cultural-heritage-of-mecca-and-medina/
The people of Timbuktu also had to hide precious historical books from Al Quaeda/ISIS in recent years just to preserve their heritage.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/the-libraries-of-timbuktu/
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So now we know where the hip-hop crow got their taste for big gold ornaments. All kidding aside, what was the comparative technological level of these societies?
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Beauty is not just with measurements, look at the eyes! The women I have spoken with from that part of Africa are usually very classy, with a nice sense of humor- they carry themselves well. I wonder what the occasion, if any of the photograph .
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In awe over her elaborate head dress and jewelry.
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@oreocat1one
You are right, her eyes are arresting…she doesn’t look like a person to be trifled with by anyone.
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@ gro jo
“what was the comparative technological level of these societies?”
Compared to who?
By the 1800s, the post states, “Timbuktu, Jenne, [were] shadows of their former selves.”
From the 1300s to 1600 BCE, were the glory days of that region. According to a book by Professor Diane Spivey:
*Prosody is the study of the rhythm and pattern of sounds of poetry and language.
From the Peppers, Cracklings and Knots of Wool Cookbook by Diane M. Spivey pages 90 to 91 (Chapter 3 – African Foods and Culinary Heritage in Mexico and Central America) 1999
They may have regressed a great deal by the early 1800s, yet there were likely pockets of learning and archivists who tended treasures from the past. Decades of warfare and slave raids may have weakened their culture and technology, but did not erase them.
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