Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents.

• Author: Pouwels, Randall L.
• Position: Brief Reviews - Book Review

Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents. By JOHN HUNWICK. Leiden, BRILL, 1999. Pp. lxv + 412. $147.

Readers familiar with the Houdas translation of this crucial work by Abd al-Rahman ibn Sadi will wonder, no doubt, if this volume is worth the hefty price. The translator admits that this is not, strictly speaking, a new edition, but amounts to a new, improved interpretation with expanded annotation. While basing his translation on Houdas's, Hunwick bases his scholarship on other manuscript versions of the document and his annotation on additional information taken from Leo Africanus's description of the Middle Niger, diplomatic correspondence concerning the Sa'dian conquest, an anonymous Spanish account, and various secondary sources and other translated works.

In Hunwick's words, the value of this new version lies in the fact that it "provides a detailed account of the rise of the Songhay Empire, its internal workings, and its demise." One might add that it affords insights into the role of the 'ulama, the transmission of Islamic learning, the social and political life of the Middle Niger, and glimpses of the earlier Malian phase as well as early Songhay history. He summarizes much of this information, as found in this document and the other sources mentioned above, in his introduction. In addition, he provides useful material on the physical and human geography of the Middle Niger region.

The volume has a few flaws. The only important one lies not in what Hunwick has done, but rather...