"The state in which he represented Timbuctoo, and its being the
residence of a Negro sovereign, instead of a muselman."
The state in which he has represented Timbuctoo, is, I think,
extremely inaccurate; and being a slave, it is more than probable,
that he was placed in a Fondaque[244], or Caravansera, belonging to
the King, which he _mistook_ for his palace; but that his narrative
should be deemed inaccurate, because he has described the town of
Timbuctoo to be under the sovereignty of a Negro prince, is to me
incomprehensible.
[Footnote 244: Vide Jackson's enlarged Account of Marocoo, &c.
p. 298.]
The various sources of information that I have investigated,
uniformly declare that sovereign to be a Negro, and that his name
in the year 1800, was Woolo. This account, it appears, is confirmed
by Adams, who says,[245] Woolo was King of Timbuctoo in 1810, and
that he was then old and grey-headed. Some years after the above
period, Riley's Narrative, epitomised in Leyden's Discoveries and
Travels in Africa, vol. i., _speaking of the King of Timbuctoo,
says, this sovereign is a very large, old, grey-headed black man_,
called _Shegar_, which means Sultan. This, however, I must observe
is a misinterpretation of the word _Shegar_, which is an
African-Arabic word, and signifies _red or carrotty_, and is a word
applicable to his physiognomy; but certainly not to his rank:--_Abd
442 Shegar_, a carrotty or red Negro. If these two testimonies, since
1800, be correct, then the _anachronism_ of which I am accused in
the New Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, (title Africa,)
is misapplied.
[Footnote 245: Since publishing this letter, Mr. Bowdich, in
his Account of Ashantee, pages 194, 195, says, Woolo was King
of Timbuctoo in 1807, or ten years before Mr. Bowdich was at
Ashantee.]
Many of this king's civil officers, however, in 1800, were
muselmen; but the military were altogether Negroes.
However fervent the zeal of Muhamedanism may be at Timbuctoo, it is
not, I imagine, sufficient to convert the Negroes, who have not the
best opinion of the Muhamedan tenets. The Negroes, however, are
disposed to abjure idolatry for any other form of religion that
they can be persuaded to think preferable, or that holds out a
better prospect; a convincing proof of which has been seen by the
readiness of the Africans of Congo and Angola, to renounce their
idolatry for the Christian faith, by the conversion of thousands to
that faith by the indefatigable zeal of the catholic missionaries,
when the Portuguese first discovered those countries, and which, if
the Sovereign of Portugal had persevered with that laudable zeal
with which he began to promote the conversion of the Africans, the
inhabitants of those extensive and populous countries might, at
this day, have been altogether members of the Christian church!!
443
_On the Junction of the Nile of Egypt with the Nile of Timbuctoo,
or of Sudan_.