The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle (review)

This elegant translation by medieval historian Troy Tice of French archaeologist François-Xavier Fauvelle’s well-received 2013 work, Le Rhinocéros d’or (Alma), is well worth the attention of all scholars of the global Middle Ages, researchers and teachers alike. It argues that the societies and peoples of the African continent were enmeshed in a global system during the period termed the Middle Ages. People here, just as in other geographies and world cultures, actively participated in the economic, social, and religious developments of the era.

Fauvelle’s substantially revised introduction for this translation is an important essay that would serve as a fine set reading for students. It tackles the challenges of African textual and material remains, their construction and contexts, and their social lives that have rendered some highly visible in the story of Africa and others obscured or absent. In his discussion of what we can and cannot know, Fauvelle observes that Africa at this period was an idea and a space often made as much by others as by its own people. While the text seeks to displace the dominance of European perceptions about African societies, it nonetheless acknowledges that many of our sources for the era remain the voices of outsiders, including Chinese and Arabic accounts. Regarding the latter, Fauvelle underlines by his case studies and in the introduction the significance of Islamic culture—its trade networks and legal ideas as much as its faith—as a connecting force at this period.

A kaleidoscopic patchwork of diverse case studies is presented, springboarding from sources such as archaeological sites, travellers’ reports and beautifully crafted objects, including the golden rhinoceros from the Kingdom of Mapungubwe (eleventh to thirteenth century) of the work’s title. These take readers to many societies of the continent over the seventh to the fifteenth centuries, as Fauvelle pursues his central arguments. The text offers thirty-four short, highly readable chapters that wear their scholarship lightly. There are no footnotes, but each essay concludes with a brief discussion of the pertinent literature for the topic.

While there are fascinating observations and insights throughout, the power and contribution of this book is surely what it offers as a whole to the idea of an agentive African continent at this period. It would ideally suit inclusion in any course on the global Middle Ages, and offers a range of maps, and colour and black and white illustrations, to assist with reader orientation regarding kingdoms, societies, ports, and towns, likely to be unfamiliar to many. Although it reveals much about the experiences of, and in, Africa at this period, the work is first and foremost a wonderful essay, in the French sense, of how the history of the African Middle Ages can be written with imagination and flair.