The Horse in West African History

The Role of the Horse in the Societies of Pre-Colonial West Africa

Robin Law

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138591769
• eBook ISBN: 9780429954559
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1980 and here re-issued with an updated preface, this book deals with the role of the horse in the societies of West Africa during the pre-colonial period. It traces the history of its introduction and its diffusion within West Africa, and examines the problems of maintaining horses in such a harsh environment. The use of horses in warfare in analysed but the non-military aspects of the West African horse culture are also discussed, principally the use of horses as tokens of status and wealth. The book includes a review of the decline of the West African horse culture in the 20th century, reflecting the passing of a political system based on warfare and slavery.

Chapter One

THE INTRODUCTION AND DIFFUSION OF THE HORSE IN WEST AFRICA

The Introduction of the Horse into West Africa

Although various species of the genus equus, of which the donkey and the zebra are the surviving modern representatives, have been present in Africa since very early times, the horse proper (equus caballus) is not native to the continent, but was introduced from Asia in relatively recent times.¹ The horse seems originally to have been domesticated in the steppes of central Asia, perhaps early in the third millennium B.C., and from there the use of horses spread into China, India, western Asia and Europe during the second millennium B.C.² Originally, when they were first introduced into these outlying areas, horses were used exclusively to pull light war-chariots. The use of horses for heavy draught work was not feasible until the invention of the modern forms of horse harness, utilizing a collar or breast-strap rather than the older yoke, which became known in the west probably only around the eighth century A.D.³ The technique of horse-riding was known in the eastern Mediterranean by the second half of the second millenium B.C., but did not become common until much later. The earliest extensive use of cavalry, as opposed to chariotry, in warfare was by the Assyrians from the ninth century B.C. onwards.⁴ Thereafter, mounted soldiers gradually replaced horse-drawn chariots in warfare throughout the horse-using world.

In Africa, the horse and the horse-drawn war-chariot were introduced first into Egypt, possibly by the Hyksos, invaders from Asia who infiltrated into the Nile valley from c. 1720 B.C. onwards.⁵ The earliest evidence for the presence of the horse in Africa is a horse skeleton excavated at Buhen, an Egyptian fort in Nubia to the south of Egypt, dated to c. 1675 B.C.,⁶ and references to horses and chariots become common on Egyptian monuments from the sixteenth century B.C. onwards. It is likely that the horse and the chariot were diffused to the Libyan peoples of Cyrenaica, west of Egypt, from the Nile valley, though it is possible that they were introduced there independently from Europe or western Asia. The horse and the chariot were certainly known in Cyrenaica by the thirteenth/twelfth centuries B.C.: it is recorded that Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt captured twelve pairs of horses (presumably the teams for twelve chariots) in a campaign against the Libu, a tribe from this area, in c. 1231 B.C., while Pharaoh Rameses III captured 183 horses and asses and 93 chariots from the neighbouring tribe of the Meshwesh in c. 1187 B.C.⁷ The horse and chariot probably arrived in north-west Africa from Cyrenaica; alternatively, they may have been introduced there by the Phoenicians, who established colonies at Carthage and elsewhere along the North African coast from about the ninth century B.C. onwards, or they may have arrived across the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain. Unfortunately, we lack evidence of conditions in north-west Africa before the fifth century B.C., but we then hear of horse-drawn chariots in use among the Garamantes, who inhabited the oases of the Fezzan in the central Sahara, and of war-chariots, presumably horse-drawn, among the Zauekes, a people living in what is now eastern Tunisia.⁸ By the late fourth century B.C., we have evidence of horses (and, apparently, chariots) in the western Sahara also, among the ‘Ethiopians’ of the Atlantic coast.⁹ The evidence of numerous rock paintings and engravings suggests that horses were once used on a considerable scale throughout the western and central Sahara, though they seem to have been much less common in the eastern Sahara.¹⁰ The horse apparently ceased to be a normal transport animal in the desert only with the spread there of the camel, another immigrant from Asia, during the first half of the first millennium A.D.¹¹

As in Asia and in Egypt, horses were originally used in North Africa and in the Sahara to draw chariots, and riding only developed later. The transition from chariotry to cavalry among the indigenous peoples of North Africa can be dated fairly precisely to around the early third century B.C. The last allusion to the use of war-chariots by the Libyans of north-west Africa relates to 307 B.C.,¹² while the first to cavalry relates to Numidian allies of Carthage fighting in Sicily in 262 B.C.¹³ In the Sahara, however, war-chariots may have continued in use rather longer, since Strabo, writing in the first century A.D., refers to their use among the Pharusii and Nigritae, peoples of the western Sahara:¹⁴ while Strabo may well be repeating material from earlier writers rather than reporting contemporary conditions, his sources are unlikely to have been as early as the fourth or third century B.C.

Horses were probably introduced into West Africa across the Sahara from northern Africa. Alternatively, they might have spread westwards from the upper Nile valley: but the rarity of horses in the early rock art of the eastern Sahara, alluded to above, makes this rather less likely. In West Africa, it is possible that horses were ridden from the beginning: at any rate, there is no evidence that horse-drawn chariots (or, indeed, any form of wheeled transport) were ever used there in early times (cf. p. 160). However, the date at which horses first reached West Africa is for the present extremely uncertain. It might, on the evidence at present available, have been anywhere between the seventeenth century B.C. and the tenth century A.D.—the terminus post quem being the known date of the introduction of horses into the Nile valley an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the 2018 Re-Issue
• Preface
• List of illustrations
• Chapter 1: The introduction and diffusion of the horse in West Africa
• Chapter 2: The supply of horses
• Chapter 3: Maintenance, health, and training
• Chapter 4: Equipment
• Chapter 5: Cavalry warfare
• Chapter 6: Non-military aspects
• Chapter 7: Horses and society in pre-colonial West Africa
• Chapter 8: Epilogue: the decline of the horse in West Africa
• Note on sources
• Bibliography
• Indexes
• Index of Persons
• Index of Peoples and Places
• Index of Peoples and Places1