The Arma people are an ethnic group of the middle Niger River valley, descended from Morisco (Muslim Spanish) invaders of the 16th century. The name, applied by other groups, derives from the word arma (weapon in Spanish), said it by the Morisco fusiliers when they screamed a las armas.^[1]

The Arma ethnicity is distinct from (but sometimes confused with) the 3.6 million Zarma people of western Niger, who predate the Moroccan invasion and speak the Zarma language, also a member of the Songhay languages.

As of 1986, there were some 20,000 self-identified Arma in Mali, mostly around Timbuktu, the middle Niger bend and the Inner Niger Delta.

The Songhai expedition and aftermath

The 1590 expedition sent to conquer the Songhai Empire trade routes by the Saadi dynasty of Morocco was made up of four thousand Moroccan, Morisco refugees and European renegades. They were armed with European-style arquebuses. After the destruction of the Songhai Empire in 1591, the Moroccans settled into Djenné, Gao, Timbuktu and the larger towns of the Niger River bend. Never able to exert control outside their large fortifications, within a decade the expedition's leaders were abandoned by Morocco. In cities like Timbuktu, the men of the 1591 expedition intermarried with the Songhai, became small scale independent rulers, and some of their descendants came to be identified as minor dynasties of their own right. By the end of the 17th century, Bambara, Tuareg, Fula and other forces came to control empires and city-states in the region, leaving the Arma as a mere ethnicity.

Castilian-Andalusian culture

With the arrival of the Arma, an unusual Andalusian community, with Castilian customs and language, began in the Niger Bend, which maintained its power until 1737 and its social and cultural preeminence until the first half of the 19th century, when they were definitively conquered by the peul ethnic group. However, the Arma continued to play a relevant role in regional politics and actively participated in Mali's independence processes. Even today they cling to their Andalusian origin, use words of Arabic origin ("alcaide", "alfalfa", "alpargata", "albornoz", "garrafa", "ámbar", "alfombra") and remember the conqueror who founded their dynasty (although he did not leave any descendants, because he was a eunuch), Yuder Pachá from Almeria. A very different vision of the role of the Almerian is the one that makes Yuder Pachá responsible for the decline of the hitherto splendid Songhay Empire, heir to the mythical kingdoms of Ghana and Mali, and what was the most economically and culturally important city in sub-Saharan Africa, Timbuktu.^[2]

See also

• Judar Pasha: Commander of the Moroccan military Expedition of the 1590s.
• Battle of Tondibi: Culmination of the Moroccan Expedition, destroying the Songhai Empire in 1591.
• Pashalik of Timbuktu: Territory governed by the Arma on behalf of Morocco.

Notes

References

• Samuel Decalo. Historical Dictionary of Niger. Scarecrow Press, London and New Jersey (1979). ISBN 0-8108-1229-0
• James Stuart Olson. The Peoples of Africa: An Ethnohistorical Dictionary. "Arma", p. 37. Greenwood Press (1996) ISBN 0-313-27918-7
• Michel Aitbol. Tombouctou et les Arma de la conquête marocaine du Soudan nigérien en 1591 à l'hégémonie de l'empire peul du Macina en 1833. Paris, (1979).
• Albrecht Hofheinz. Goths in the Lands of the Blacks. New Arabic manuscript finds from Timbuktu and their significance for the historiography of the Niger Bend . (2001)
• Hunwick, John O. (1999), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sadi's Tarikh al-Sudan down to 1613 and other contemporary documents, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 90-04-11207-3.

External links

• I Congreso Internacional sobre los Arma. Al-Andalus, Andalucía y España en Tombuctú y la frontera subsahariana (s. XVI-XXI). Universidad de Jaén (Spain), 19–20 February 2004.