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041		7	_aen _2iso639-1
050		4	_aDT
100	1		_aCooley, William Desborough, _d1795?-1883
245	1	4	_aThe Negroland of the Arabs examined and explained
264		1	_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2026
300			_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia
338			_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier
500			_aRelease date is 2026-04-13
508			_aGalo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by Google and the Bibliothèque nationale de France/Gallica)
520			_a"The Negroland of the Arabs examined and explained" by William Desborough Cooley is a historical-geographical study written in the mid-19th century. It reconstructs the early geography and political landscape of Central/Western Africa (“Negroland”) from medieval Arabic sources, focusing on caravan routes, river courses, and the true location of key states such as Ghana. The work argues—against earlier misreadings—that medieval Ghana lay near the later site of Timbuktu, and it scrutinizes Arabic texts with a method that separates firsthand observation from later system-building. The opening of the work dedicates the essay to Pascual de Gayangos, credits his Arabic extracts as its spur, and sets out a preface that defines the aim: to fix the early geography of Central Africa by critically reading Arab writers (especially El Bekri, with Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Battuta, and Idrisi compared), while guarding against copyist errors, name-corruptions, and conjectural mapping. The introduction outlines two natural trans-Saharan corridors—Fezzan to Kanem/Bornu in the east and, more crucially here, the western route from the Atlas/Sus to the “Great River”—and explains why Andalusian-Arab ties to Almoravid Berbers made the western line the best documented. Cooley then uses El Bekri’s “Book of Roads and Realms” to retrace the caravan path from Sijilmasa via Támedelt across a sequence of wells and mountain passes into the belt of drifting sands (the desert of Tíser/Azawad), where Masufa guides and Zenaga tribes (Lumtuna, Goddala) dominated. He identifies Aulil, the coastal salt and ambergris outlet, with Arguin, and locates Aoudaghost on the southern desert margin as a Berber trading colony later eclipsed by shifting routes. The analysis of distances and bearings leads to the core claim: Ghana’s capital—comprising the paired towns of Aukar (Muslim) and Ghaba (royal, pagan)—stood near the northwestern bend of the “Nile of the Blacks,” close to the future Timbuktu. The river’s described course from Silla northeast to “Ras el Ma,” then east and south to Kawkaw, with Tademekka on the desert edge, anchors this placement and frames Ghana’s relations with neighboring Tekrur and other riverine markets. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534			_pOriginally published: _cLondon: J. Arrowsmith, 1841
653			_aSudan (Region) -- Historical geography
856	4		_uhttps://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015027776643
856	4	0	_uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78434
999			_c119154 _d119154