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West Africa
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Early West African agriculture comprised regionally varied cultivation systems based on indigenous crops such as sorghum, millet, fonio, rice, yams, oil-palm, and kola. Arabic writers from the ninth to fourteenth centuries describe established farming across the Sudan, Sahel, and forest zones, while the extract stresses uncertainty over the chronology and origins of several domesticates.
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Agriculture in West Africa developed around a diverse range of crops adapted to contrasting ecological zones. The extract lists sorghum, pearl millet, fonio, cowpea, earth pea, water-melon, okra, yams, oil-palm, kola, and other plants as part of the region's cultivated or partly managed flora. Some species were indigenous domesticates, while others remained difficult to distinguish from wild plants protected or gathered by human communities.
The earliest written evidence presented here comes largely from Arabic authors. Al-Ya'qubi described Awdaghust as an oasis and referred to sorghum at Zawila and Sijilmasa; Ibn al-Faqih reported that Ghana's inhabitants were fed on sorghum and called millet dukhn. Al-Bakri later described gardens at Awdaghust containing date palms, irrigated wheat, figs, vines, henna, gourds, and orchards, while also recording sorghum and cotton at Silla in Takrur.
By the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, the evidence depicts agriculture as flourishing throughout West Africa. Al-Idrisi described sorghum as the staple of Takrur and identified millet, onions, gourds, and water-melons in the Sudan, while al-'Umari and Ibn Battuta recorded rice, fonio, sorghum, yams, beans, shea-butter, calabashes, and melons in Mali, Walata, and Gao. The forest zone had distinctive crops including yams, oil-palm, kola, and cocoyam, although the literary evidence for some Asian introductions appears later.
Non daté
West Africa
Traduction non disponible · Original (anglais) · français indisponible
Early West African agriculture comprised regionally varied cultivation systems based on indigenous crops such as sorghum, millet, fonio, rice, yams, oil-palm, and kola. Arabic writers from the ninth to fourteenth centuries describe established farming across the Sudan, Sahel, and forest zones, while the extract stresses uncertainty over the chronology and origins of several domesticates.
Poursuivre l’exploration
Le récit
Agriculture in West Africa developed around a diverse range of crops adapted to contrasting ecological zones. The extract lists sorghum, pearl millet, fonio, cowpea, earth pea, water-melon, okra, yams, oil-palm, kola, and other plants as part of the region's cultivated or partly managed flora. Some species were indigenous domesticates, while others remained difficult to distinguish from wild plants protected or gathered by human communities.
The earliest written evidence presented here comes largely from Arabic authors. Al-Ya'qubi described Awdaghust as an oasis and referred to sorghum at Zawila and Sijilmasa; Ibn al-Faqih reported that Ghana's inhabitants were fed on sorghum and called millet dukhn. Al-Bakri later described gardens at Awdaghust containing date palms, irrigated wheat, figs, vines, henna, gourds, and orchards, while also recording sorghum and cotton at Silla in Takrur.
By the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, the evidence depicts agriculture as flourishing throughout West Africa. Al-Idrisi described sorghum as the staple of Takrur and identified millet, onions, gourds, and water-melons in the Sudan, while al-'Umari and Ibn Battuta recorded rice, fonio, sorghum, yams, beans, shea-butter, calabashes, and melons in Mali, Walata, and Gao. The forest zone had distinctive crops including yams, oil-palm, kola, and cocoyam, although the literary evidence for some Asian introductions appears later.