Dô
Do Dugubani Dô | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital | Dugubani | ||||||||
| Common languages | Mandinka | ||||||||
| Religion | African traditional religion | ||||||||
| Government | Kafu | ||||||||
| Historical era | 11th-18 century | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Mali | ||||||||
Dô, also spelled Daw, sometimes called Dodougou or Do Dugubani, was a kafu (a coalition of villages headed by a paramount chief) in the Niger river valley around the modern village of Tamani, west of Segou. It existed as early as the 11th century, and played a prominent role in the establishment of the Mali Empire: the founder Sundiata Keita's mother, Sogolon Condé, was from Dô.[1]
Andalusian writer Al-Bakri records two countries, "Daw" and "Malal", located near the Niger and close to gold-fields.[2] In al-Idrisi's account of 1154, he noted that the two towns of Daw and Malal were four days' travel apart, located in a river valley that joins the Nile (meaning the Niger River).[3]
Some sources place the Do of the Sundiata story in the Sankaran region, west of Niani, rather than near Segou.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ Gestrich, Nikolas & MacDonald, Kevin & Keita, Daouda & Camara, Seydou. (2018). The ‘Pays Dô’ and the Origins of the Empire of Mali. in Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, Edited by Toby Green and Benedetta Rossi, 10.1163/9789004380189_005.
- ^ al-Bakri in Nehemiah Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds and trans, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1981, reprint ed. Princeton, NJ,: Marcus Wiener, 2000), p. 82-83.
- ^ al-Idrisi in Levtzion and Hopkins, eds. and transl, Corpus, p. 108.
- ^ Bühnen, Stephan. “In Quest of Susu.” History in Africa 21 (1994): 1–47. https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.2307/3171880.