Meanwhile in Ualata, on the farba...
“Our merchants stood up in his presence and, even though they were close to him, he spoke to them through a third person. This was a mark of the little consideration he had for them and I was so unhappy at this that I regretted bitterly having come to a country whose inhabitants display such bad manners and give evidence of such contempt for white men.”
-Ibn Battuta
- The latter (farba) addresses a crowd only through a herald; this was how the farba must have acted at his own court in Ualata.
Diop, Cheikh Anta: Precolonial Black Africa












