Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | Ibn Battuta's Yufi Bronze and Gold in Mid-Iron-Age Africa |
| Author: | Sutton, John E.G. |
| Year: | 1981 |
| Periodical: | Transafrican Journal of History |
| Volume: | 10 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 138-177 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Subsaharan Africa Africa |
| Subjects: | long-distance trade history traditional polities History and Exploration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328593 |
| Abstract: | Yufi, mentioned in the fourteenth century by Ibn Battuta in both south-eastern and western Africa, represented two important kingdoms which he imagined were one and the same, owing to his contracted vision of the geography of black Africa. The south-eastern face of Yufi was Zimbabwe with its gold. Yufi's western face, in contact with Mali and located by Ibn Battuta towards the lower Niger, is normally taken to mean Nufe (Nupe) on the supposition of a mislection of Arabic n as y. But a more faithful reading would be Ufe (alternatively pronounced Ife). Ibn Battuta's testimony illustrates the two separate axes of black Africa's contact with the wider world in the mid-Iron-Age, the Saharan caravans and the Indian Ocean dhow-traffic. The locations of workable gold were especially influential in determining routes and entrepôts. Truly trans-African routes are not discerned; the heart of the continent remained basically untouched. But Ibn Battuta's image of Yufi, albeit shallow and confused, provides, ironically, some insight into cultural continuity across this vast interior. The ritual, artistic, political and economic roles of copper, both in regions where it was mined and in others where it was traded, are one example. Where appropriate, copper was measured against gold. Maps, notes. |
