The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

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Periodical article

Title:	The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Author:	Lovejoy, Paul E.
Year:	1978
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	19
Issue:	2
Pages:	173-193
Language:	English
Geographic term:	West Africa
Subjects:	Islamic history Songhai polity mercantile history History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/181597
Abstract:	Historically the term 'Wangara' underwent a series of changes. North Africans first used it to indicate Juula and Jakhanké merchants and clerics in the Niger-Senegambia region. Later it became the term for Songhay merchants and their diaspora communities in Borgu and the Hausa cities. Finally it came to mean resident merchants in Borgu, and in a modified form it became the Hausa word for traders from the west in general. The 'Wangara' included those who played a key role in the social, religious and commercial life of Songhay and the Central Sudan, namely the merchants and professionals in the middle estate of Muslims, and they were instrumental in the economic development of the Central Sudan in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and had a crucial impact on the growth of the Hausa economy in particular. Wangara history also demonstrates several features of commercial diaspora development and contraction. Map, notes, sum.