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JAY SPAULDING
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581
15Foranintroduction
to primarysourcesandtheiruse,see NormanF. CantorandRichardI.
Schneider,How to StudyHistory (New York, 1967), 22-24.
582
JAY SPAULDING
Misr"of IbnAbdal-Hakam(NewHaven,1922),169-70(preparations
forthe
knownas the "Futuh
invasionof Nubia)and188-89(twoversionsof thebaqtagreement).
17 A.J. Wensinck, "AMRB. AL-AS," Encyclopaedia of Islam, I, 451.
18 Torrey, Conquest of Egypt, 188.
19 Vantini, Oriental Sources, 95; the British Museum preserves in manuscripta Farsi trans-
583
foray, of no great import? Had not the battle already taken place in the days of Amr?
Perhaps it was Amr who imposed the terms of the baqt? Perhaps Nubia was so
poor and worthless that its conquest had never really been contemplated?20 After
eight centuries of imaginative revisionism, al-Maqrizi would be able to describe in
picturesque detail how the defeated Nubian monarch Qalidurat, crushed in battle at
his capital, had "asked for peace, and went out [from Old Dongola] to meet [the
Muslim commander] Abd Allah looking humble, sad and submissive."21 The
magnanimous Muslim conqueror had treated the forlorn little Christian king kindly,
and had granted him terms-the terms delineated by al-Maqrizi's version of the
baqt, the text now commonly regarded as authoritative. This received consensus
interpretation, however, rests upon one serious historical misapprehension. The
battle that had led to the treaty was not an Islamic triumph;the victors had been the
Nubians.
The Oldest Surviving Interpretations
Ibn Abd al-Hakam was not only the first historian to expose the circumstances in
which the baqt came into being; he was also the first scholar to claim to know what
the contents of the agreement had actually been. By his day, however, more than a
century after the fact, two rival alternativeversions had already gained currency. As
a conscientious scholar of tradition Ibn Abd al-Hakam not only recorded both
versions, but also cited the sources of information upon which each interpretation
rested. Ultimately, both versions of the baqt treaty had reached Ibn Abd al-Hakam
through the testimony of a man of a previous generation named Yazid. The alternative traditions differed radically, however, as to who this informant might have
been and whence his information about the baqt had originated.
According to one version, Yazid was simply a man who had found occasion
to read a written text of the baqt treaty, a document since destroyed and therefore
unavailable for confirmation by Ibn Abd al-Hakam, that had once existed in the
state archives of Egypt. The treaty had been written in the days of Amr b. al-As and
had been signed by the Nubians; the latter, as the price of peace, had committed
themselves not to settle in Islamic territory,to the extradition of runaway slaves and
fugitives, and to the payment of annual tribute of 360 slaves (singular, abd ). Aside
from toleration of the Nubians' existence, the victorious Muslims owed the
Nubians nothing. This version of the baqt treaty, clearly a linear ancestor to the text
elaborated centuries later by al-Maqrizi, is vulnerable to critique within the tradition
of Islamic scholarship because it misrepresents the agreement as an accomplishment
of Amr b. al-As; this was a serious flaw in an interpretationthat claimed to be based
20 Forvarianttraditions
of thisepisodein thehistoryof IslamicEgyptas reconstructed
by
latergenerations
of writers,andsomediscussionof theirmerits,see Cuoq,Islamisation,
9, andthe
sourcescitedtherein.
21 Wiet,"Maqrizi:
290.
Khitat,"
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JAY SPAULDING
585
24 "Legatigentis Maccurritarum
Constantinopolimveniunt dentes elephantinoset
Johnof
IustinoprincipimuneraofferentessibicumRomanisamicitiascollocant."
camelopardam
AbbatisBiclarensisChronica,
Monumenta
Germaniae
Historica
DLXVII-DXC,"
Biclar,"Iohannis
Auctorum Antiquissimorum, Tomus XI: Chronicorum Minorum Saec. IV. V. VI. VII. [1894]
(Berlin,1961),II, 213.
25 Adams(Nubia,436) hascorrectlynotedthattheNubiansdidnotfindit necessaryto rely
in theconductof governmental
affairs.
heavilyuponwrittendocuments
26 It is unlikelythatMakurian
kingswouldhaveinitiatedbaqtexchangesin wartime.The
authorsal-Nuwayri
andIbnal-Furat
fourteenth-century
compileda registerof theperiodsknownto
586
JAY SPAULDING
eral obligation to pay tribute, it is likely that one common motive for severing relations was often Islamic violation of the principle of reciprocity. As one Makurian
monarch put it, "now, in as much as they have cut off [their payments], we have
also cut off [ours]."27 Particularly eloquent testimony to the primacy of Nubian
diplomatic initiative in the maintenance of the baqt may be found in the behavior of
the last puppet kings of Makuria who survived under Egyptian tutelage for most of
a century after the conquest of 1276. Though nothing in the stipulations of the
treaty imposing tributarystatus obliged them to do so, these pathetic figures nevertheless optimistically continued to offer their new masters supererogatory gifts that
both contemporaries and modem scholars have recognized as baqt payments.28
themduringwhich,priorto the actualinvasionandconquestof Makuriain 1276, the Islamic
limitedmilitaryoperations
of Egypthadconducted
government
againstNubia;thefifteenth-century
andal-Taghribirdi
authorsal-Maqrizi
addedanadditional
hadoverlooked.
episodetheirpredecessors
The intervalsof knownhostilitiespriorto the conquestwere:723-742;761-769;854-868 [alMaqriziandal-Taghribirdi];
910-915;935-969;1066;1171-1175.Thesourcescitedare:ShihabalDin AhmadAbdal-Wahhab
al-Nuwayri,Nihayatal-arabfi fununal-adab;therosterof known
periodsof hostilitybetweenIslamicEgyptandMakuriais foundnot in anypublishedportionof
thisverylargework,butin thethirty-volume
Nationale
manuscript
preserved
by theBibliotheque
in Paris;cited here is the translationanthologizedin Vantini,OrientalSources,476-477;C.
Jamalal-DinYusufb.
Ruzayq,ed., TarikhIbnal-Furat,(Beirut,1942),VII,44-45;Abu'l-Mahasin
al-Taghribirdial-Zahiri,al-Nujwn al-zahirafi mulukMisr wal-Qahira (Cairo, 1932), II,295-296;
273-277.
Wiet,"Maqrizi:
Khitat,"
Khitat,"
294), fromtheIslamicconquestof Egypt
Accordingto al-Maqrizi
(Wiet,"Maqrizi:
thedefeatedNubiansdutifullypaidtheirannualtributeunder(hisversionof) thebaqtforabouttwo
centuries,up to thereignof theAbbasidcaliphal-Mutasim
(833-842).Thatis notcorrect.Inaddiin 723-742 and761-769becauseof hostilities,it is specifically
tion to probableinterruptions
knownthatthefirstAbbasidgovernorof Egyptafter752 foundthatno shipmentswereforthcoming forseveralyears;"Youdo notbringto us thatto whichyouareliableaccordingto thebaqt,"
he wrotein 758 (Plumley,"Letter,"
theriseof the
243).A similarbreakin relationsaccompanied
Fatimids(969-1171);in thiscase,a sympathetic
was eagerto restoregood
Egyptiangovernment
relations.(Fortheaccountof theFatimidambassador
IbnSalimal-Aswani,baseduponportionsof
his writingspreserved
"Ladescription
de la Nubied'albylatermedievalauthors,see G. Troupeau,
Aswani,"ArabicaI [1954],276-88).Withtheriseof theAyyubids(1171-1250)a Nubianattempt
to inititebaqtexchangewasrebuffed;see Shihabal-DinAbuShamaAbdal-Rahman
b. IsmailalMaqdisi al-Dimishqi al-Shafii, Kitab al-rawdataynfi akhbar al-dawlatayn (Cairo, 1870), I, 209.
27E.A.WallisBudge,trans.,TheChronography
of Barhebraeus
(London,1932),134.
28Forthetextof thetreatyof surrender
Islamicterms,see
imposingtributeon conventional
al-Mufaddal,
al-Nahjal-sadidwa'l-durral-faridfima baadtarikhIbn al-Amid,ed. E. Blochet,
"Histoire
des SultansMamlouks,"
PatrologiaOrientalis14, 3 (1920),400-403;a Frenchtranslationmaybe foundin Cuoq,Islamisation,
88-90.BothCuoq(Islamisation,
76) andAdams(Nubia,
587
Surprisingly, at least some of these initiatives were reciprocated; this was not
because the foreign conquerors were willing to palliate the lowly status of defeated
Makuria, but because, through centuries of usage, the economic dimension to the
baqt exchange had taken on a life of its own.29
The Baqt in the Context of Nubian Economy
The economic organization of the old agrarian states of Northeast Africa differed
significantly from that of the more highly commoditized societies of the Mediterranean and Red Sea.30 Each African monarch closely regulated all spheres of
exchange activity; conspicuously, the right to trade into and out of the kingdom was
a royal monopoly, to be exercised precisely through the exchange of diplomatic
gifts with neighbors introduced above.31 Such exchanges provided kings with
exotic luxury items with which to elevate their own lifestyle or to reward deserving
subordinates; in relation to the state economy as a whole, however, the royal trade
abroad was trivial in magnitude and never a matter of more than secondary significance.32
The baqt, in addition to its diplomatic function, may also be viewed in
economic terms as one fortuitously documented branch of the royally administered
32 Withthepossibleexceptionof firearmsandammunition
on theeve of WorldWarI; see
Spauldingand Kapteijns,Islamic Alliance.
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JAY SPAULDING
589
590
JAY SPAULDING
By the dawn of the ninth century, attempts by foreign Muslims at Aswan to assert
the right to purchase property across the border in Nubia precipitated an international incident. Significantly, the Makurian king was obliged to give way; the
northernmost Nubian district thereafter became a zone of special status within
which Mediterraneanconcepts of private ownership and commercial exchange were
allowed to prevail. No foreign merchant was to pass southward, however, upon
pain of death.41 Yet the pressure was relentless; two hundred years later, by the
close of the tenth century at least some northerntraderswere being admitted into the
heartland of Nubia; by that time the Alodian capital of Soba had a quarterassigned
to foreign merchants.42
Meanwhile some Nubian subjects themselves, especially from the northern
zone of special status, had also become private merchants and had begun to conduct
their own commercial ventures northwardinto Egypt.43 The Nubian king attempted
to maintain his hold over subjects living abroad, and to profit from their private
commerce, by negotiating an arrangement according to which a royal Makurian
agent was authorized to reside and to travel within the Islamic caliphate in order to
collect taxes from Nubians living abroad. This attempt by the Nubian kings to
maintain some form of control over the incipient class of Makurian private
merchants may well have been new when first recorded during the ninth century,
and since the arrangement was never mentioned again, it is not likely that it long
endured.44
As the medieval Beja community made the transitionfrom victims to participants in private trade, the Red Sea-based commerce too began to impinge upon
Makuria's southeastern frontier. By the twelfth century a new entrepot had arisen
midway between Old Dongola and the Alodian capital of Soba at a site near the
confluence of the Nile and the Atbara River; there "merchantsfrom the Nubians and
591
the Ethiopians gather; those from Egypt also come here, when there is peace
between them."45By the fourteenth century the prince of al-Abwab, lord of what
had formerly been the northernmost district of Alodia but now the prosperous
patron of the new commercial entrepot at the Atbara confluence, was eager to assist
the Muslims of Egypt in their conquest of Makuria.46
In short, while the traditionalNubian royal exchange institutions of the baqt
may well have remained the Makurian kings' preferred vehicle for the conduct of
foreign trade, the rival Mediterranean institutions of private enterprise had challenged the baqt system from the beginning and gradually won significant ground at
its expense. In the end, after the fall of Makuria, ideological partisans of free enterprise even more extreme than al-Maqrizi were willing (retrospectively of course) to
write freedom of access for Islamic private merchants into the original baqt agreement itself; according to the fourteenth-centuryhistorian Ibn Khaldun, for example,
the baqt had decreed that the Nubians "must not hinder the traders going to, and
coming from [their country]."47Here as elsewhere in Northeast Africa the hidden
agenda of Islam often included commercial capitalism.
Medieval Nubia and the Slave Trade
A recent generation of Cliometricians, inspired by efforts to quantify slavery in
West Africa, have undertaken to enumerate slave exports from medieval Nubia
also. The success of this praiseworthy but difficult endeavor is contingent upon the
establishment of convincing figures both for slave exports under the baqt system
and for the slaves acquired outside the baqt system by private merchants. The
present study will argue that neither of these objectives has been achieved.
The tradition of legally oriented Islamic scholarship introduced above
claimed that by rights the Nubians should deliver several hundred slaves a year, and
the Cliometricians have embraced this figure uncritically, as if it represented real
data about real slaves rather than professorial casuistry. "The famous baqt paid by
Dongola to the rulers of Egypt for several centuries," says Patrick Manning,
"included some 400 slaves per year."48While the surviving sources of information
45 Al-Idrisi,ed. R. Dozy andM.J.De Goeje,Descriptionde l'Afriqueet de l'Espagnepar
Edrisi [1866](Leiden,1968),Arabicpagination
20. Al-Idrisireferredto thisentrepotas a "town,"
a designation not confirmed by archaeology;perhapsa seasonal fair or bandar would be a better
image. The name of the entrepotwas Bulaq, a name used also in regardto the river-portsof Cairo
and Aswan; the termmay simply have meant "port"or "entrepot."
46 For the history of al-Abwab the present authoris indebted to Mr. Ahmad al-MutasimalShaykh for permission to consult his extended unpublished study, "Mamlakatal-Abwab alMasihiyya fi'l-usural-wusta;"alternatively,see Vantini, Oriental Sources, 485, 491-92, 499, and
537-38.
47 Abdal-Rahman
b. Muhammad
IbnKhaldun,Kitabal-ibarwa-diwanal-mubtadawa'lkhabar(Beirut, 1960-1967) 1I,971-72.
48 PatrickManning,SlaveryandAfricanLife:Occidental,
OrientalandAfricanSlaveTrades
(Cambridge, 1990), 90. Manning elsewhere (29) states that annual tribute was paid "fromabout
592
JAY SPAULDING
about actual baqt payments are so fragmentary and ambiguous that they should
probably not be asked to bear the weight of any elaborate interpretive edifice, it is
reasonably clear that the Nubian kings had no principled objection to slavery and
were willing to include slaves in their contribution to baqt exchanges. Whoever
expected to receive 400 slaves a year, however, was likely to be disappointed;
under ordinary circumstances, young King George explained to the Abbasid caliph
during a diplomatic mission to Baghdad in 836, Makuria simply lacked the capacity
to produce that number. His host agreed, and proposed a reduction by two-thirds,
which target, however, subsequent generations of Makurian leaders did not necessarily meet.49 In many years no baqt shipments at all were forthcoming, and in
other years goods other than slaves assumed a prominent position. In only one
specific instance do surviving records from independent Makuria specify the actual
number of slaves sent to Egypt as a baqt payment; that number is two.50 Of course,
during the century of terminally bitter Nubian civil war that followed the Islamic
conquest of Old Dongola in 1276, the puppet kings installed by Cairo and backed
by garrisons of Egyptian troops were able to do considerably better; they sent north
200 slaves in 1292 and a thousand in 1313.51 These puppet kings, unlike their free
predecessors, were surrounded by armed chaos and had no need to acquire their
slaves abroad. "[The Nubians] are Christians and have a hard life," wrote a fourteenth-century observer from Egypt; "They are imported and sold."52 The arithmetic average of 2, 200, and 1,000 does in fact approach 400; surely, however,
this is very slim evidence upon which to base sweeping statistical inferences about
most of a millennium of historical experience?
650 untilthe fourteenthcentury,andrequiredDongolato furnishsome400 slaves each year."
to truckandbarterin humanfleshto thereligionof Islam:"Islam
a propensity
Manningattributes
seemsto havedonemoreto protectandexpandslaverythanthereverse.Inanearlyexampleof this
of Egyptleviedanannualtributeon theChristiankingdomof
influence,the Muslimconquerors
SlaveTrade:A TentativeCensus,"in
Dongola"(28). See alsoRalphAusten,"TheTrans-Saharan
Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendom, eds., The UncommonMarket:Essays in the Economic
Historyof theAtlanticSlaveTrade(NewYork,1979),23-76.
49Forsourcesanda discussionsee GiovanniVantini,"Leroi Kirkide Nubiea Baghdad:
Un
ou deux voyages?" in Erich Dinkler, ed., Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in Christlicher Zeit
593
quicklyovertookdeliveriesunderthebaqt;thisis a plausiblespeculation.
theImmeasurable:
The AtlanticSlaveTrade,West
54 CompareDavidHenige,"Measuring
andthePyrrhonian
AfricanPopulation
Journalof AfricanHistory,XXVI, 2 (1986),295Critic,"
313.
55 Manning(SlaveryandAfricanLife,51) assertsthatmostslavesimportedintotheIslamic
OrientfromAfricawerefemales;compareVantini,OrientalSources,301-307,354, 364-68,38993, 732-33.
56 AbuShama,Kitabal-rawdatayn,
I, 209.
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JAY SPAULDING