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Origin of the Yoruba and “The Lost Tribes of Israel”

: 579 595 Origin of the Yoruba and The lost Tribes of Israel Dierk LangeAbstract. On the basis of comparative studies between the dynastic tradition of the y - Yoruba and ancient Near Eastern history, the present article argues that Yoruba traditions of prov-enance, claiming immigration from the Near East, are basically correct. According to y - Yoruba tradition, the ancestral Yor-uba saw the Assyrian conquests of the Israelite kingdom from the ninth and the eighth centuries from the perspective of the Israelites. After the fall of Samaria in 722 , they were deported to eastern Syria and adopted the ruling Assyrian kings as their own.

Origin of the Yoruba and “The Lost Tribes of Israel” Anthropos 106.2011 581 tions of major states situated north of the Yoruba refer to …

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Transcription of Origin of the Yoruba and “The Lost Tribes of Israel”

1 : 579 595 Origin of the Yoruba and The lost Tribes of Israel Dierk LangeAbstract. On the basis of comparative studies between the dynastic tradition of the y - Yoruba and ancient Near Eastern history, the present article argues that Yoruba traditions of prov-enance, claiming immigration from the Near East, are basically correct. According to y - Yoruba tradition, the ancestral Yor-uba saw the Assyrian conquests of the Israelite kingdom from the ninth and the eighth centuries from the perspective of the Israelites. After the fall of Samaria in 722 , they were deported to eastern Syria and adopted the ruling Assyrian kings as their own.

2 The collapse of the Assyrian empire is, however, mainly seen through the eyes of the Babylonian conquerors of Nineveh in 612 This second shift of perspective reflects the disillusionment of the Israelite and Babylonian deportees from Syria-Palestine towards the Assyrian oppressors. After the defeat of the Egypto-Assyrian forces at Carchemish in Syria in 605 numerous deportees followed the fleeing Egypto-Assyrian troops to the Nile valley, before continuing their migration to sub-Saha-ran Africa. [Nigeria, Assyrians in Africa, lost Tribes of Israel, migrations, state foundation, conquest state, dynastic traditions, oral traditions, African king lists]Dierk Lange, Dr.

3 Troisi me Cycle (1974 Paris), Th se d tat (1987 Paris); Prof. em. of African History, Univ. of Bay reuth. Field research in Nigeria, Niger, and Libya. Publications in-clude books and articles on the history of the medieval empires of West Africa (Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Kanem-Bornu) and on the history and anthropology of the Yoruba , Hausa, and Kanuri. See References IntroductionAccording to the present opinion, the Yoruba are of local Origin , but this opinion reflects the great influ-ence of postcolonialism on African historiography rather than sober text-critical research.

4 It involves the fallacious dismissal of the major traditions of provenance suggesting an Origin of the ancestral Yo-ruba in the Near East. In fact, before the rise of ac-ademic African historiography in connection with the independence of African states around 1960, scholars relied more directly on the available tra-ditions of Yoruba Origin and they did some com-parative research between Yoruba , ancient Mediter-ranean and Israelite cultures. On the basis of this evidence they suggested that the Yoruba immigrat-ed from far away: either from Phoenicia, the Medi-terranean world, Egypt, or Nubia (Biobaku 1955: 8 13; Lange 1995: 40 48).

5 If any of these supposi-tions could be shown to be true and present opinion to be ideologically biased, it would mean that a cul-ture of the ancient world survived in sub-Saharan Africa, which in the area of Origin was superseded by subsequent sweeping developments such as Hel-lenization, Christianization and Islamization (Lange 1995, 1997, 1999).Academic historians of the postcolonial period take a hypercritical position by pointing out sev-eral factors thought to invalidate the basic message of the traditions which formerly had been consid-ered to be of minor significance.

6 They emphasize that migration of the Yoruba was unlikely as long as people further north were not immigrants. They estimate that traditions of migration from the Near East were the result of an Islamic feedback, suppos-ing that local keepers of traditions manipulated the historical data for the sake of inventing a prestigious history equivalent to that of Muslims and Chris-tians (Fage 1976: 64 f.; Henige 1982: 81 f.). More particularly they accuse scholars who do not con-form to Afrocentric attempts to reconstruct African history of following the so-called Hamitic hypoth-esis, which supposedly denies Africans the ability to found their own states.

7 With little concern for the 580 Dierk LangeAnthropos sources, they claim that any reference to migrations from outside Africa results mainly from the attempt to justify colonialism by projecting the colonial situation into the past (Law 2009: 297 f.). Clearly such ideological preconceptions based on nationalistic historiography erect considerable bar-riers for any sober approach to the available his-torical sources. Moreover, they greatly inhibit any attempt to venture beyond the natural barriers of re-gional studies and they create enormous obstacles for the integration of Africa into world history in ancient times.

8 Migration from the Near East and the Foundation of the Sahelian States North of the YorubaFrom the ninth century onward, numerous Arab authors provide information on African states south of the Sahara obtained from Arab and Ber-ber traders who had visited them. Most of these au-thors were geographers with little interest in his-tory. A great exception is al-Ya q b , the earliest of the three most important historians of the Arabs, who was born in Iraq and finished his acclaimed Ta r kh in 873 in Khurasan. It is very fortunate for African history that al-Ya q b had a global view of mankind, far transcending the Islamic horizon.

9 After relating the history of the biblical patriarchs and that of the ancient world, he continues with In-dia and China, and then turns his attention to sub-Saharan Africa, beginning his account with a great migration: The people of the progeny of H m, son of Noah, left the country of Babel, went to the west, crossed the Euphra-tes, continued to Egypt and thence moved to East and West Africa. West of the Nile the Zaghawa settled in Kanem, next the Hausa (text: H WD N), then the Kawkaw and finally the people of Ghana (Levtzion and Hopkins 1981: 21).

10 Historians tend to discard this information as fic-tive because it seems to press all early human his-tory into the mould of descent from Noah. However, it can be shown that al-Ya q b was too dedicated to facts to manipulate the history of African people by inventing ex nihilo details of an early migration in order to make it fit the preconceived idea of bib-lical descent. Most likely he relied in this case on information obtained from travelers who had vis-ited the Sahelian kingdoms themselves. In fact, two other writers, Ibn Qutayba in the ninth century and al-Mas d in the tenth, echo similar partly inde-pendent traditions (Levtzion and Hopkins 1981: 15, 31).


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