Ancient Near Eastern Studies:
Otto Kaiser is professor em. and Dr. h.c. mult. of Old Testament Studies at the University of Marburg. At present he is still the editor of TUAT, a three volume edition of Texts of the Ancient Near East in Relation to the Old Testament. He is also the honorary editor of the journal ZAW of which he has been the chief editor for many years. He is considered to be the dean of Old Testament Studies in Germany.
In his view there exist "remarkable parallels between the New Year Festival of Ife and Ugarit...A similar festival is very likely to have also been celebrated in Israel although the details provided by the Psalms are only fragmentary. Therefore it is all the more important to compare them with the findings of the author...The scholars of Old Testaments studies would be well advised to have their eyes sharpened by the remarkable cult-dramatic details of the festival and its myth...The two chapters of the book concerning the history of the Hausa and the New Year Festival of Ife are strongly recommanded to the scholars of Old Testament studies".
Niemeyer, H. G., "Blick auf Afrika", Antike Welt, Zeitschrift für Archäologie und Kulturgeschichte 37, 1, 2006, 101.
Hans Georg Niemeyer is professor em. of Ancient history and archaeology at the University of Hamburg. He is a leading specialist of the Phoenician expansion. In his opinion it is quite plausible to suppose wide reaching effects of the Phoenician expansion on sub-Saharan Africa. He thinks that “further thorough and unprejudiced research will eventually uncover even more mythological and institutional parallels” between the sub-Saharan societies and the Canaanite-Phoenician world of North Africa.
African History and Anthropology:
Baroin, C., Bulletin Méga-Tchad, 20 (2005), 48-50.
Catherine Baroin is Directrice de Recherche in Anthropology in the CNRS and she ist the editor of the Bulletin Méga-Tchad. She has written several books and a great number of articles on various anthropological topics and in particular on the Teda-Dazza of Niger and Chad. She considers the parallels between the cult-mythology of Hausa and Yoruba society on one hand and Canaanite-Israelite society on the other in some detail and agrees that these structural elements point to ancient connections.
Leland Conley Barrows is professor of history at the Voorhees College, Denmark, South Carolina, US. He finished his PhD 1974 in UCLA and is a specialist of French colonial history. Formerly he also taught at the University of Constantine, Algeria.
Leonard Harding is professor of African History emeritus of the University of Hamburg. He is a specialist of modern African history. He has also written an apologetical study on Sheikh Anta Diop, the Senegalese precursor of Afrocentism. He agrees with the idea that the Phoenicians reached the region of Lake Chad and established various states there but his is reluctant to follow the author with respect to the Canaanite-Israelite background of the New Year festival of Ife (Yoruba).
comment to L. Harding
David Henige from the University of Wisconsin, USA, is known for his methodolocial approach to African history. In 1982 he wrote Oral Historiography, London, in which he outlines he significance of feedback phenomena for African oral traditions. He tends to believe that all Biblical survivals in Africa must derive from loans taken from the Bibel or the Koran. Being convinced of fast changes in African societies he neglects the importance of the longue durée for the study of African history.
Reply to D. Henige, Paideuma 54 (2008), 353-264.
Rainer Osswald is professor of Islam and particularly of Islam in Africa at the University of Bayreuth. He has specialized on the history of Islam in Africa writing on the history of Islam in Mauretania and on the Jihad of Northern Nigeria.
The author summerizes correctly some of the older and the three extensive new contributions concerning the history of the Hausa, the Yoruba and the Middle Niger. He appreciates the innovative thust of the ideas expressed with respect to Ancient Near Eastern influences on the process of state building in the Central Sudan.
Weisser, G., Journal of African Archaeology, 3, 2 (2005), 297-299.
Gabriele Weisser helds a doctorate in Historical Anthropology. Presently she participates in a DFG sponsored Research Program of the Frobenius Institute, University of Francfort, concerning the pictoral heritage of Leo Frobenius.
Vansina, J., private letter to the author 15/2/2005
Jan Vansina is professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published a number of books on African history and is considered the most influential living scholar in the field of pre-colonial African history. His positive assessment to the author's comparisons are partly the result of his historical and anthropolgical approach.____________________________________________________________________________ African Archaeology:
Gronenborn, D., Anthropos 101 (2006), 299-300.
Dr. Detlef Gronenborn is an archaeologist who has conducted serveral compaigns of field research in the region south of Lake Chad. Subsequently he completed a thesis on the achaeology and history of the chiefdoms south of Lake Chad from the seventh to the twentieth century. He appreciates the studies concerning the medieval period and considers the suggestions for ancient history as interesting but on the whole too speculative.
comment to D. Gronenborn
Insoll, T., Journal of African History 47 (2006), 491-492.
Timothy Insoll was born in 1967 and is professor of archaeology at the University of Manchester. He is a specialist of Islamic archaeology and has done field research in Gao in eastern Mali and elsewhere.
comment to T. Insoll
Others:
The article is based on an interview with the author and has two original photos from Ile-Ife, one showing members of the cult-group of Obatala and the other members of the Oluyare/Igbo.
Jacques Debergh, Latomus, n° 67 (2008), p. 269.
In preparation:
Alfred Adler, L'Homme
Vittorio Morabito, Afrique et Histoire
Paolo Xella, Rivista di Studi Fenici
Reviews of : Le diwan des sultans du Kanem-Bornu: chronologie et histoire d'un royaume africain
Lavers, John, Journal of African History 23 (1982, 122-3.
Bernus, Suzanne et Marguerite Le Cœur, L'Homme 19, 2 (1979), 89-92.
Meunier, Roger, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 18 (1978), 638-9,
Person, Yves, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1985) n° 5, 1412-3.
Person, Yves, Le Mois en Afrique (1980,) (1981)?, 143-4.
Lukas, Johannes, Der Islam, 56, 1 (1979), 158-9.
Wagner, Ewald, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (1979) ??, 413.
Table of contents and introduction
A SUDANIC CHRONICLE: THE BORNO EXPEDITIONS OF IDRIS ALAUMA (1564-1576) (1987)
ACCORDING TO THE ACCOUNT OF AHMAD B. FURTU
ARABIC TEXT, ENGLISH TRANSLATION, COMMENTARY AND GEOGRAPHICAL GAZETTEER
Fisher, Humphrey. in: Journal of African History 31 (1990), 141-143.
Norris, Harry T. in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 52 (1989), 554-5.
Triaud, Jean-Louis in: Revue Francaise d'Histoire d'Outre-mer 70 (1990), 261-2.
Frank, Barbara in: Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 85 (1990), 727-9.
Harding, Leonard in: Afrika und Übersee 72 (1989), 145.
Wagner, Ewald in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 139 (1989), 499.
Eisenstein, H. in: Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 84 (1994), 238-9.
Table of contents (pdf)
Reviews
CONTENTS - The prevailing modernizing and westernizing approach in African studies has contributed to reduce the scope of historical inquiry in African societies to relatively recent periods. Therefore pre-Christian and pre-Islamic influences from the outside world have been largely ignored or underappreciated. On the basis of hitherto unexplored written, oral and cult-mythological sources, the present study shows that the Phoenician city states of North Africa contributed to a large extent to the emergence of complex organizational structures, such as the Sudanic states, and interrelated religious performances in sub-Saharan Africa. Since these features have partly survived until the present time, key elements of the cultural heritage of certain great West African peoples - like the Yoruba, the Hausa and the Kanuri - allow us for the first time to extend the map of the ancient world to regions beyond the Sahara.
{mosimage}On the other hand, owing to the survival of the basic Canaanite-Israelite cultural pattern in specific African societies, important new insights for the understanding of Semitic myth and ritual features can be derived from existing African situations. This study gives new relevance to topics like the cult-dramatic performance of the New Year festival, the re-enactment of the "dying and rising god" and the social implications of the connections between myth and ritual. With respect to specific fields of inquiry in ancient Semitic religion, the present volume deals with the ritual underpinning of the Ugaritic Baal cycle, the mythological background of the biblical distinction between Isaac/Jacob and Ishmael, the cult-mythological implications of the contrast between Israelites and Arabs, the clan basis of cult-dramatic performances re-enacting the social dualism of Canaanite-Israelite society, and the former polytheistic setting of the pilgrimage of Mecca. By drawing on African anthropological material the present volume opens a new dimension for future biblical and ancient Near Eastern research. The text is illustrated by numerous original maps, charts and photographs.
THE AUTHOR - Dierk Lange is Professor of African History at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. He presents here the results of more than thirty years of research devoted to the history of Africa and explains his more recent focus on relations with Phoenician North Africa. Before his appointment in Bayreuth, he studied African and Islamic history as well as anthropology in Paris, worked on Arabic texts for four years in Cairo and taught African and Islamic history for five years at the University of Niamey. He crossed the Sahara several times and undertook more than fifteen research trips to Nigeria, Niger and Chad. His publications in three languages include two books, numerous articles in learned journals and two contributions to the UNESCO history of Africa. He is unique in comparing African cultural forms with those of the ancient Near EAST.
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39 illustrations and maps, 15 photos
59,80 EUR
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