[2] In The Travels Of Francis Moore The Reader Will Find A Pretty
Copious Vocabulary Of The Mandingo Language, Which In General Is
Correct.
They are called Mandingoes, I conceive, as having originally migrated
from the interior state of Manding, of which some
Account will hereafter
be given; but, contrary to the present constitution of their parent
country, which is republican, it appeared to me that the government in
all the Mandingo states, near the Gambia, is monarchical. The power of
the sovereign is, however, by no means unlimited. In all affairs of
importance, the king calls an assembly of the principal men, or elders,
by whose councils he is directed, and without whose advice he can neither
declare war nor conclude peace.
In every considerable town there is a chief magistrate, called the
_Alkaid_, whose office is hereditary, and whose business it is to
preserve order, to levy duties on travellers, and to preside at all
conferences in the exercise of local jurisdiction and the administration
of justice. These courts are composed of the elders of the town, (of free
condition,) and are termed _palavers_; and their proceedings are
conducted in the open air with sufficient solemnity. Both sides of a
question are freely canvassed, witnesses are publicly examined, and the
decisions which follow generally meet with the approbation of the
surrounding audience.
As the Negroes have no written language of their own, the general rule of
decision is an appeal to _ancient custom_; but since the system of
Mahomet has made so great progress among them, the converts to that faith
have gradually introduced, with the religious tenets, many of the civil
institutions of the Prophet; and where the Koran is not found
sufficiently explicit, recourse is had to a commentary called _Al
Sharru_, containing, as I was told, a complete exposition or digest of
the Mahomedan laws, both civil and criminal, properly arranged and
illustrated.
This frequency of appeal to written laws, with which the Pagan natives
are necessarily unacquainted, has given rise in their palavers to (what I
little expected to find in Africa) professional advocates, or expounders
of the law, who are allowed to appear and to plead for plaintiff or
defendant, much in the same manner as counsel in the law courts of Great
Britain. They are Mahomedan Negroes who have made, or affect to have
made, the laws of the Prophet their peculiar study; and if I may judge
from their harangues, which I frequently attended, I believe that in the
forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of
confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not always surpassed by the
ablest pleaders in Europe. While I was at Pisania a cause was heard which
furnished the Mahomedan lawyers with an admirable opportunity of
displaying their professional dexterity. The case was this: An ass
belonging to a Serawoolli Negro (a native of an interior country near the
River Senegal) had broke into a field of corn belonging to one of the
Mandingo inhabitants, and destroyed great part of it.
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