Abu Bakr II

Abu Bakr II (fl. 14th century), also spelled Abubakri and known as Mansa Qu, may have been the ninth mansa of the Mali Empire. He succeeded his nephew Mansa Mohammed ibn Gao and preceded Mansa Musa. Abu Bakr II abdicated his throne in order to explore "the limits of the ocean".

Background

Abu Bakar was one of two sons of Kolonkan, a sister of the founding emperor Sundjata Keita. He was the last of a mini-dynasty within the Keita clan of emperors descending from Kolonkan. After his abdication in 1311, the Faga Laye mini-dynasty would control the empire.

Reign

Virtually all that is known of Abu Bakr II is from the account of Chihab al-Umari. Al-Umari visited Cairo after Mansa Musa stopped there during his historic hajj to Mecca, and recorded a conversation between Musa and his host, Abu'l Hasan Ali ibn Amir Habib. According to Musa, Abu Bakr became convinced that he could find the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and outfitted an expedition of 200 ships to find it. Only one of those ships returned; the captain related that the expedition had come to a "river with a powerful current" in the ocean. The current took most of the fleet away, after which the captain turned back. According to Musa, Abu Bakr was undeterred and launched an even larger expedition with himself as the head, departing with 2000 vessels for his men and a like number for supplies. He left Musa, his vizier, as his deputy during his absence. The expedition was never heard from again, and Musa became the next emperor.

Trans-Atlantic travel

Ivan van Sertima formerly of Rutgers University, and Malian researcher Gaoussou Diawara, proposed that Abu Bakr II traveled to the New World.

Most archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars say that there is no evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas, and that there are insufficient evidential grounds to suppose there has been contact between Africa and the New World at any point in the pre-Columbian era.. For views representative of this point of view, see the considerations on the question advanced in Haslip-Viera et al. (1997), who for example note "no genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation in the New World". See also the supporting responses in peer-review printed in the article, by David Browman, Michael D. Coe, Ann Cyphers, Peter Furst, and other academics active in the field. Ortiz de Montellano et al. (1997, passim.) continues the case against Africa-Americas contacts. Other prominent Mesoamerican specialists such as UCR Riverside anthropology professor Karl Taube are confident that "There simply is no material evidence of any Pre-Hispanic contact between the Old World and Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century".

A BBC article titled "Africa's greatest explorer", summarizes the controversy from the perspectives of the scholars and historians in Mali.

See also

• Keita Dynasty
• Mali Empire
• Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories

References

Preceded by Mohammed ibn Gao

Mansa of the Mali Empire 1310–1312

Succeeded by Kankan Musa I

External links

• Malian praise singer Sadio Diabate, singing about Abubakar II - BBC World Service Audio