Talk:Abu Bakr ibn Umar

Death of Abu-Bakr

We will need to see the actual reference where it details his death. This sloppy unknown source is part of the problem for serious history seekers. I have just search Amazon all over the place and cannot find anything that say he was killed by a Serer king. Per R.S. and WP:SET, if someone as critical as Abu Bakr was killed then for the sake of history we will need to see more than an obscure source I cannot, or anyone cannot check.While it is not critical per policy WP:SOURCEACCESSthat I check it. I think for this BIG CLAIM we need the editor to do a R.S and verify its reliability. esp when i should see other mainstream accounts of the specifics of his death. In plain language why is only these sources provided saying this and others not? --Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 12:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

In addition to the sources I previously cited in the Serer people article, here you can find relevant links will come back later:

• 1.[1]

• 2. [2]
• 3.[3]

Amazon: (Gravrand) but not available.

• [4]
• [5]

There are so many sources. This article is missing many issues. Will be back for for more.

Tamsier (talk) 14:10, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Mr French Speaker, can you only put ref in English. God knows what they are saying in French.I want to see the actual text, even if you copy and paste it I will trust it.--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 14:18, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• In good faith, I will translate a passage from Pangool by Henry Gravrand since I actually have the books.

Henry Gravrand, Page 13, La civilisation Sereer Pangool. 1990:

"Finally, the destabilization of the political intitutions with the fall of the Ghana Empire in 1076 and the collapse of the Almoravids in the south with the death of Abu Bakr ibn Umar, mortally wounded by the Sereer Amar Godomat in November 1087(of the Christian calender; 480 Sha'aban), perhaps gave the signal of the exodus." [6]. Tamsier (talk) 15:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I am not being picky but i take African history as serious as White people take European History. As mentioned on the Almoravid page it would be good to know the primary sources of these source, (as a general interest).--Halqh حَلَقَة הלכהሐላቃህ (talk) 16:24, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I notice there are still no sources in the article for Abu Bakr's death date. It appears that Ibn Idhari had him dying in 1075 or 6, clearly stating that it was only 3 years after the agreement with Yusuf ibn Tashfin, as quoted and discussed here. Other Arabic sources back that up. If this is correct then, no matter which way you slice it, he could not have been the conqueror of Ghana, if indeed there ever was a conquest.

The narrative on Abu Bakr the conqueror of Ghana and his death in 1087 comes largely from Ibn Abi Zar, whose account is largely exaggerated and fanciful. But there is numismatic evidence that he lived later than 1075. It's a puzzle that definitely deserves direct attention in the article. Catjacket (talk) 21:40, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Picture of Abu-Bakr near the lead

If you do a quick internet search for Abu Bakr ibn Umar, you will find a more complete version of the picture that is currently in this article. The full picture shows a seated person and on many websites the seated person is said to be Mansa Musa of Mali. Some websites say that Abu Bakr is going to meet Mansa Musa. The problem is Abu Bakr ibn Umar lived from 1056 to 1087 and Mansa Musa lived from 1280 to 1337. Therefore, Abu Bakr ibn Umar could not have possibly rode to meet Mansa Musa.

http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/hu51929acb.jpg

Please review and provide your feedbackRod (talk) 15:22, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I have looked into this and that is why the caption says 'Possible' this debate came up before on the page Moors. I personally know it is not Ibn Umar but many RS say "could be"--Inayity (talk) 18:50, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 June 2021

Zenati-sanhaji (talk) 20:16, 7 June 2021 (UTC) The image of abu bakr ibn umar is not accurate, the catalan atlas depictation of it is more accurate since its older

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:47, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Original source of the image

The image file says "mecia de viladestes map of 1413", ie this

which is held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. I can't find a reliable source identifying the image we use, although there are sources saying that the seated figure is Mansa Musa and at least one of these says he is offering gold to an approaching Muslim merchant. Doug Weller talk 13:03, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

The figure is in the bottom left.

Portolan charts are a niche scholarship, and the 1413 Mecia de Villadestes chart in particular tends to be understudied. So don't expect many sources. The identification of the camel-rider as the Almoravid emir Abu Bakr ibn Umar is suggested in several studies, e.g.

• Charles de la Roncière (1925) La découverte de l'Afrique au Moyen Age, cartographes et explorateurs, v.1.
• Jaime Cortesão (1975) Os Descobrimentos portugueses, v.2, p.339.

(I don't have the first at hand to give you the page number, but have the second). There are various other offhand mentions I have seen elsewhere, which I would have to look up, and get to you later.

The clincher of the identification is the glittering gold label added by Mecia de Viladestes, variously read as "Rex Bubeder" or "Rex Bubecer", attached to the camel-riding figure. In other words, this camel-rider is "King Abu Bakr". Which Abu Bakr we don't know exactly. But the clothing, geographical location and surrounding inscriptions describing his kingdom makes it clear this is the ruler of a Sanhaja Almoravid state. Since the Almoravid emir Abu Bakr ibn Umar is the only ruler of that area whose name would have been familiar to Medieval Europeans, the likelihood is very high. There is no other Abu Bakr that would conceivably fit the bill.

Alas an otherwise good modern study by Yoro Fall (1982, L'Afrique à la naissance de la cartographie moderne) does not avail of these sources and does not make the identification (and inexplicably makes a rather strange error - Fall doesn't realize that Mecia's gold label refers to that figure! He assumes the king is simply not shown - despite every gold label on the chart referring to one of the cartoon figures. I take it as an oversight.)

Since this comes up often (some people get really hung up on the dark pigment used for his skin - apparently it disturbs modern racial sensitivities), maybe I should write out a more extensive answer here, discussing the rest of the evidence, rather than have to repeat it separately every time it comes up. Walrasiad (talk) 01:11, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

This debate/contention about the image still keeps coming up, and it's popped up again in recent edits at the Almoravid article (here). The points above are well-taken, but given that this is a map drawn hundreds of years after the Almoravids and there is still not much in the way of certain confirmation, we seem to be relying on editors interpreting which image is the most "correct" one. Those claiming the 1375 Catalan Atlas is an "original" representation, however, aren't offering any further evidence for that claim. As said above, it's an unidentified figure on a map with many unidentified figures and illustrations, which is no less anachronistic than the 1413 map; why wouldn't you just as easily claim that it's another North African ruler from another period?

If the identity of the figure in the 1413 map is not easily verifiable, then I suggest that this is not the best lead image in the spirit of MOS:IMAGES guidelines. Readers can perfectly understand the article whether or not a vague camel rider figure is in the infobox. Meanwhile, it's quite commonplace for articles about North African Islamic-era rulers to have feature coinage as a lead image (e.g. Ali ibn Yusuf, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman, Al-Aziz Billah, Abu Zakariya Yahya, Al-Nasir Muhammad, etc), so I suggest using that as a non-controversial lead image for now (there is one available here, but there may be better examples to find outside Commons). I think it's reasonable for the 1413 image to simply be included further down, where the caption can be more easily expanded with citations and context without turning the infobox into its own paragraph and/or editing battleground. I see no reason to include the 1375 Catalan Atlas image without any clear supporting citations.

I've implemented this suggestion in this edit. If others disagree with it and want to revert, that's fine. Either way though, I'd encourage anyone (Walrasiad or other) in the meantime to provide details for some reliable sources that say (or argue) that this is Abu Bakr. We can then add those citations in the article itself for better verifiability. Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 22:25, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

On Catalan vs Mecia (for the record): many of the figurines on the Mecia de Viladestes chart of 1413 are evidently copies of figurines in the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (as customary among the Majorcan cartographic school). The descriptive texts of the Catalan and Mecia maps also closely resemble each other, and both texts describe the veiled Lamtuna/Mosifes (i.e. Almoravids) in the text underneath. However, the Catalan Atlas does not explicitly identify any of the figures by name, whereas Mecia does (in gold lettering labels). It is possible to make the assumption that Catalan Atlas intended to represent the same person, but we are not certain. The names were added retroactively by Mecia. We have no idea who the Catalan Atlas was originally trying to represent. That hasn't always been an obstacle. We use the depiction of the Malian king in the Catalan Atlas in the lede of the Mansa Musa article, even though the Catalan Atlas does not identify him by that name, only Mecia de Viladestes does (with label "Rex Musameli"). But many RS on Catalan Atlas are willing to go with that identification as well. However, I am less willing to concede that the Catalan Atlas's depiction of the veiled Lamtuna camel-rider is consciously intended to be a depiction of Abu Bakr. That is a connection made only by Mecia (with label "Rex Bubecer"), and is only noted in RS commentaries on Mecia's map (and not in RS commentaries of Catalan atlas).

As to one being "closer to reality" than another, that is nonsense. All the figures on these charts are imaginarily drawn - they are about as "close to reality" as Medieval pictures of Jesus Christ. The cartographers relied on textual sources to compose their images, and some of their depictions are quite laughable. e.g. Mecia depicts the Emperor of Ethiopia ("Prester John") as a white Latin Catholic bishop!

On substitution attempts: I have gathered from long experience with this figure is that the push by some editors to delete or replace the Mecia image with the Catalan image is usually purely due to a distaste for the dark pigment that Mecia used for the king's skin (Catalan Atlas uses a lighter pigment). The dark pigment apparently offends certain racially-sensitive editors who think it depicts Abu Bakr as a Black African and that it is somehow impossible (or insulting) for a Moroccan/Mauritanian king to be depicted as a Negro since "all North Africans are white" (or some such nonsense) (!). Never mind that this chart was drawn by a Medieval European artist who had no idea what his race really was, and that depicting "Moors" as dark-skinned was pretty commonplace in Medieval European art and heraldry (vide only the flags of Corsica and Sardinia). Frankly, we have no idea if Mecia had any intention to depict any particular race, or why he chose that pigment (or if that was the original color at all, the pigment may have simply darkened over time). The color doesn't matter. What matters is the label and identification, and that is clear in Mecia and is not in the Catalan Atlas. So I am not willing to concede to substitution with the Catalan image just to satisfy modern racist theories.

Mecia's 1413 depiction is the only known historical representation of Abu Bakr ibn Umar, at least consciously identified as such. That image has a unique historical value in itself, and needs to be retained here.

I'm fine with your proposal to use the coin in the lede, and letting the Mecia image be shunted further down the page, if that will help deter future headaches. But it should not be removed from the article nor substituted by the Catalan image. Walrasiad (talk) 00:20, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. That all sounds fine to me, but can you recommend a source to cite in the caption to support this in the article? (Like one of the sources you've mentioned or alluded to already.) Doing so would make it clearer to readers that there is substance to this identification (even if tentative), and clearer to other editors that whimsically substituting one image for another would be easily challenged. R Prazeres (talk) 00:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Either or both of Ronciere & Cortesao should do for now, if you want to add them. I'll see if I can find more. Unfortunately, the 1413 Mecia de Viladestes chart has not been given as much attention as it deserves, so there aren't many studies on it, and is usually only mentioned in passing. Which is a tremendous pity, since the 1413 Mecia chart is perhaps the best existing document we have depicting the sum total of European knowledge about Africa just before the beginning of the Portuguese voyages of discoveries. Walrasiad (talk) 01:02, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Done. Thanks! R Prazeres (talk) 01:10, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

---

FWIW, here's a close-up of Mecia de Villadeste's 1413 depiction of the African interior (Senegal-Niger-Nile latitude), with the main figures. Mecia's figurines (unlike Catalans) are gold-labeled as legendary kings of the African interior, from left to right: "Rex Bubecer" (Almoravids), "Rex Musa Meli" (Mali), "Rex d'Organa" (Hoggar? Ghana? Ouargla? identification disputed), "Rex d'Nubia" (Nubia) and "Pestre Joha" (Ethiopia). These are not gratuitous cartoons but geographic markers. Each king figure is carefully situated in the exact geographical location of their kingdoms, with some citadels named and flagged to show the range of their authority, and textual notes describing their kingdoms. Considering that no (known) Christian European had ever traveled to these interior regions, and the cartographers relied entirely on second-hand hearsay from a few Arab travelers and murky legends and rumors. The remarkably accurate positioning of these figures on the map, right on the correct geographic locations of their kingdoms, is quite the masterpiece of cartography.

While the Catalan Atlas of 1375 contains some of these same figures and text descriptions, what Mecia de Viladestes did in 1413 was explicitly identify the figures as kings, and name them with gold labels. (Mecia also has a larger interior and more details).

Course of the "River of Gold" (Senegal-Niger) in the 1413 portolan chart of Mecia de Viladestes.

The importance of the Mecia image of Abu Bakr ibn Umar image is not the image per se, but the identification (which is absent in Catalan Atlas). It is historically valuable evidence of Abu Bakr ibn Umar was a figure of wide renown, that his name was still remembered and recognized more than three centuries after his death. Abu Bakr looms large in Arab chronicles, he appears in African oral traditions and songs, and he shows up on a European map. Three civilizations preserved his memory and fame. That's what is important for this article. The identification of his name is why the Mecia image is specifically valuable, while the Catalan isn't.

It is evident that the Arab geographers al-Bakri (a 11th C. contemporary of Abu Bakr) and al-Idrisi (slightly later) were major sources for the geographic data used by the cartographer in the composition of the African interior. For them, Abu Bakr ibn Umar wasn't some distant past legend, but current history. And that's the information Mecia had to work with. Outdated perhaps, but it was all he had. [the tale of Abu Bakr's southern conquest is comically confused by the cartographer - he apparently assumed the Arabic term "al-Sudan" was the name of a town rather than a region, and so depicts Abu Bakr marching on the citadel of "Sudam", on what seems like the location of either Awdaghost or Koumbi Saleh (northeast of "Tocoror", Takrur).]

Why bother to depict him so much later? Abu Bakr is the founder and only known ruler of the southern Almoravid kingdom. Although the northern Almoravid kingdom had long collapsed, as far as Europeans in 1413 knew, the southern Almoravid kingdom was still intact and continued to exist somewhere in the African interior. But where exactly? The map shows you where. The figure is drawn exactly on top of the Lamtuna homelands, where the kingdom founded by Abu Bakr was purported to lie - north of Senegal and west of Mali. And the string of Trans-Saharan stations depicted shows you how to reach it (at least to the best of the cartographer's spotty knowledge of inland routes). Walrasiad (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

PS - For the curious about the inscription, here is the text below Rex Abu Bakr's feet describing the southern Almoravid kingdom. Mecia de Viladestes writes in 1413 (to the best of readings, as it is blurry):

"Tota aquesta partida, tenen gens que van embocats qe nols veu hom sino los uils e van en tendes, e fan cavalcades am camells e ay moltes besties qui an non çalams de aquel quyr, fan les targes les quals apelen mosifes"

To translate:

"In all this part, there are people who veil themselves so only their eyes are seen and go in tents, and do cavalcades on camels, and there many beasts here called 'çalams', from whose skins they make shields, who are called mosifes".

The Mecia 1413 text is an almost-direct copy of the inscription in the 1375 Catalan Atlas, with the difference that Mecia refers to the gazelles as "çalams" where Catalan writes "lemp", and Mecia adds the note about the people being called "mosifes".

çalams = lemp = lamth/lamt = Saharan oryx. The large shields of the Almoravids were famously made of oryx hide, a fact repeatedly commented on by contemporaries; so much that its primary constituent tribe was called the "Lamtuna" (oryx men). (On a side-note, in a famous tale, in the 1080s, when Alfonso VI of Castile was raiding the area around Andalusian taifa kingdom of Seville, and mockingly demanded entrance into the city of Seville because "I need to rest, I am tired from so much raiding in the hot sun", the Andalusian king replied menacingly "Don't fret. I will soon provide a shady spot for you to rest, under a canopy made from the hide of a lamt" (i.e. Seville had just invited the Almoravids over from Morocco).

The last part Mecia adds (which is not in Catalan Atlas) is that these people are called "Mosifes". Mosifes = Massufa, one of the constituent tribes of the Almoravids. Incidentally, the Massufa were the branch of the Almoravids that ruled Majorca, Mecia's home, in the 11th-12th Centuries, which might explain why he added that note - 'Mosifes' may have been the local Majorcan name for the Almoravids.

The veil and the knotted whip borne by the camel-riding king are two other quintessential features of the Almoravids. Veiling below the eyes is a Saharan Sanhaja Berber custom - precisely the peoples the Almoravids came from and unified, which they popularized. The veil served as the constant uniform of the Almoravids, and earned them the common appellation "the veiled ones" by contemporaries. The knotted whip is also Almoravid tradition - as noted by Norris (1971), Messier (2010) and others, a central instrument of their strict religious discipline, introduced by the imam Abdallah ibn Yasin. Walrasiad (talk) 15:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

February 2022

@AvaBrandon2000: The title of "Emir" (as in commander) doesn't make him royalty. As for the image, please see the above discussion. M.Bitton (talk) 17:09, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@AvaBrandon2000: Please don't make me report you to the admins. M.Bitton (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@M.Bitton: I think you are too radical pointlessly. If you want you can report me. But seriously the divergence here is on a picture and the info box type ... Also, I have made other modifications and you arbitrarily decided to remove them. These modifications being: the additions I've put in the introductory text and the accurate fully detailed bio of the info box.

Info box are multiple there is info box royalty, info box nobility etc. Sure he wasn't born royalty, but he attained it, that is why info box royalty is justified for him. Emir as of "commander" is not the accurate naming for him: he was "Amir al Muslimin" as a Muslim ruler; and "Amir al Murabitun" for his dominions.

About him being white or black, thank you for providing me the above discussion you pointed to on Abu Bakr. I have read the document and clearly there is an ongoing debate on it: Quote:" Some websites say that Abu Bakr is going to meet Mansa Musa. The problem is Abu Bakr ibn Umar lived from 1056 to 1087 and Mansa Musa lived from 1280 to 1337. Therefore, Abu Bakr ibn Umar could not have possibly rode to meet Mansa Musa.

http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/hu51929acb.jpg

Please review and provide your feedbackRod (talk) 15:22, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

I have looked into this and that is why the caption says 'Possible' this debate came up before on the page Moors. I personally know it is not Ibn Umar but many RS say "could be"--Inayity (talk) 18:50, 14 July 2014 (UTC) of it having the white one depicted from Abraham Cresques is accurate."-end quote

So there is one picture of him black bearing the adjective "possible" ID of him, and another of him "White" being the certain ID of Abu Bark. Also he's a Lamtuna and not from any black people (Fula, Soninke etc), we don't know if he's mixed-race. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AvaBrandon2000 (talk • contribs) 18:38, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@AvaBrandon2000: Although I stand by what I said, I just don't have the time or the energy to deal with this right now; therefore, I have decided to revert my last edit (which was done before you left the above comment). M.Bitton (talk) 18:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

@AvaBrandon2000: Next time, please remember to indent and sign your comments. M.Bitton (talk) 19:06, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Note: I've left a response in the discussion above that is relevant to part of this discussion. (Since my point was purely about the image, I preferred to keep it to the earlier discussion.) R Prazeres (talk) 22:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)