The area was previously occupied by the
Serer people, who following
their religious and ethnic persecution by Islamic forces in the 11th century, resulted in the Serer exodus to the south. The existence of the Senegal River was known to the early Mediterranean civilizations. It or some other river was called
Bambotus by
Pliny the Elder (possibly from
Phoenician "
behemoth" for
hippopotamus) and
Nias by
Claudius Ptolemy. It was visited by
Hanno the Carthaginian around 450 BCE at his navigation from
Carthage through the
pillars of Herakles to
Theon Ochema (
Mount Cameroon?) in the
Gulf of Guinea. There was trade from here to the
Mediterranean World, until the
destruction of Carthage and its
west African trade net in 146 BCE.
Arab sources In the Early Middle Ages (c. 800 CE), the Senegal River restored contact with the Mediterranean world with the establishment of the
Trans-Saharan trade route between
Morocco and the
Ghana Empire. Arab geographers, like
al-Masudi of Baghdad (957),
al-Bakri of Spain (1068) and
al-Idrisi of Sicily (1154), provided some of the earliest descriptions of the Senegal River. Early Arab geographers believed the upper Senegal River and the upper
Niger River were connected to each other, and formed a single river flowing from east to west, which they called the "Western Nile". (In fact, some of the headwaters of the Senegal River are near the Niger River in Mali and Guinea.) It was believed to be either a western branch of the Egyptian
Nile River or drawn from the same source (variously conjectured to some great internal lakes of the
Mountains of the Moon, or
Ptolemy's Gir (Γειρ) or the Biblical
Gihon stream). (1068) Arab geographers Abd al-Hassan Ali ibn Omar (1230),
Ibn Said al-Maghribi (1274) and
Abulfeda (1331), label the Senegal as the "Nile of
Ghana" (Nil Gana or Nili Ganah). As the Senegal River reached into the heart of the gold-producing
Ghana Empire and later the
Mali Empire, Trans-Saharan traders gave the Senegal its famous nickname as the "River of Gold". The Trans-Saharan stories about the "River of Gold" reached the ears of Sub-Alpine European merchants that frequented the ports of Morocco and the lure proved irresistible. Arab historians report at least three separate Arab maritime expeditions - the last one organized by a group of eight
mughrarin ("wanderers") of
Lisbon (before 1147) - that tried to sail down the Atlantic coast, possibly in an effort find the mouth of the Senegal.
Cartographic representation (1154) Drawing from Classical legend and Arab sources, the "River of Gold" found its way into European maps in the 14th century. In the
Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300), there is a river labelled "Nilus Fluvius" drawn
parallel to the coast of Africa, albeit without communication with Atlantic (it ends in a lake). It depicts some giant
ants digging up gold dust from its sands, with the note "
Hic grandes formice auream serican [or servant] arenas" ("Here great ants guard gold sands"). In the mappa mundi made by
Pietro Vesconte for the c. 1320 atlas of
Marino Sanuto, there is an unnamed river stemming from the African interior and opening in the Atlantic ocean. The 1351
Medici-Laurentian Atlas shows both the Egyptian Nile and the western Nile stemming from the same internal mountain range, with the note that "
Ilic coligitur aureaum". The
portolan chart of
Giovanni da Carignano (1310s-20s) has the river with the label,
iste fluuis exit de nilo ubi multum aurum repperitur. In the more accurately-drawn
portolan charts, starting with the 1367 chart of
Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano and carried on in the 1375
Catalan Atlas, the 1413 chart of the
Catalan converso Mecia de Viladestes, etc. the "River of Gold" is depicted (if only speculatively), draining into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere just south of
Cape Bojador. The legend of Cape Bojador as a terrifying obstacle, the 'cape of no return' to European sailors, emerged around the same time (possibly encouraged by Trans-Saharan traders who did not want to see their land route sidestepped by sea). The river is frequently depicted with a great river island midway, the "Island of Gold", first mentioned by al-Masudi, and famously called "
Wangara" by al-Idrisi and "
Palolus" in the 1367 Pizzigani brothers chart. It is conjectured that this riverine "island" is in fact just the
Bambuk-Buré goldfield district, which is practically surrounded on all sides by rivers - the Senegal river to the north, the
Falémé River to the west, the
Bakhoy to the east and the
Niger and
Tinkisso to the south. . The 1413 portolan chart of
Mecia de Viladestes gives perhaps the most detailed depiction of the early state of European knowledge about the Senegal River prior to the 1440s. Viladestes labels it "River of Gold" ("
riu del or") and locates it a considerable distance south of
Cape Bojador (
buyeter) - indeed, south of a mysterious "
cap de abach" (possibly Cape Timris). There are extensive notes about the plentifulness of ivory and gold in the area, including a note that reads The galley of
Jaume Ferrer is depicted off the coast on the left, with a quick note about his 1346 voyage. The golden round island at the mouth of the Senegal River is the indication (customary on portolan charts) of river
mouth bars or islands - in this case, probably a reference to the
Langue de Barbarie or the island of
Saint-Louis). The first town, by the mouth of the Senegal, is called "
isingan" (arguably the etymological source of the term "Senegal"). East of that, the Senegal forms a riverine island called "
insula de bronch" (
Île à Morfil). By its shores lies the city of "
tocoror" (
Takrur). Above it is a depiction of the
Almoravid general
Abu Bakr ibn Umar ("
Rex Bubecar") on a camel. Further east, along the river, is the seated emperor (
mansa) of
Mali ("
Rex Musa Meli", prob.
Mansa Musa), holding a gold nugget. His capital, "
civitat musa meli" is shown on the shores of the river, and the range of the Emperor of Mali's sway is suggested by all the black banners (an inscription notes "This lord of the blacks is called Musa Melli, Lord of Guinea, the greatest noble lord of these parts for the abundance of the gold which is collected in his lands". Curiously, there is a defiant gold-bannered town south of the river, labelled "
tegezeut" (probably the Ta'adjast of al-Idrisi), and might be an inchoate reference to
Djenné. East of Mali, the river forms a lake or "Island of Gold" shown here studded with river-washed gold nuggets (this is what the Pizzigani brothers called the island of "
Palolus", and most commentators take to indicate the Bambuk-Buré goldfields). It is connected by many streams to the southerly "mountains of gold" (labelled "
montanies del lor", the
Futa Djallon/
Bambouk Mountains and
Loma Mountains of Sierra Leone). It is evident the Senegal river morphs east, unbroken, into the
Niger River - the cities of "
tenbuch" (
Timbuktu), "
geugeu" (
Gao) and "
mayna" (
Niamey? or a misplaced
Niani?) are denoted along the same single river. South of them (barely visible) are what seem like the towns of
Kukiya (on the eastern shore of the Island of Gold), and east of that, probably
Sokoto (called "Zogde" in the Catalan Atlas) and much further southeast, probably
Kano. man,
Trarza region of the Senegal River Valley, Abbé David Boilat, 1853 North of the Senegal-Niger are the various oases and stations of the
trans-Saharan route ("
Tutega" =
Tijigja, "
Anzica" = In-Zize, "
Tegaza" =
Taghaza, etc.) towards the Mediterranean coast. There is an unlabeled depiction of a black African man on a camel traveling from "
Uuegar" (prob.
Hoggar) to the town of "Organa" ("
ciutat organa", variously identified as
Kanem or
Ouargla or possibly even a misplaced depiction of
Ghana - long defunct, but, on the other hand, contemporaneous with the depicted Abu Bakr). Nearby sits its Arab-looking king ("
Rex Organa") holding a scimitar. The River of Gold is sourced at a circular island, what seem like the
Mountains of the Moon (albeit unlabeled here). From this same source also flows north the
White Nile towards Egypt, which forms the frontier between the Muslim "king of
Nubia" ("
Rex Onubia", his range depicted by crescent-on-gold banners) and the Christian
Prester John ("
Preste Joha"), i.e. the emperor of
Ethiopia in the garb of a Christian bishop (coincidentally, this is the first visual depiction of Prester John on a portolan chart). Uniquely, the Viladestes map shows another river, south of the Senegal, which it labels the "
flumen gelica" (poss.
angelica), which some have taken to depict the
Gambia River. In the 1459
mappa mundi of
Fra Mauro, drawn a half-century later, after the Portuguese had already visited the Senegal (albeit still trying to respect Classical sources), shows
two parallel rivers running east to west, both of them sourced from the same great internal lake (which, Fra Mauro asserts, is also the same source as the Egyptian Nile). Mauro names the two parallel rivers differently,calling one "
flumen Mas ("Mas River"), the other the "
canal dal oro" ("Channel of Gold"), and makes the note that "
Inne larena de questi do fiume se trova oro de paiola" ("In the sands of both these rivers gold of 'palola' may be found"), and nearer to the sea, "
Qui se racoce oro" ("Here gold is collected"), and finally, on the coast, "
Terra de Palmear" ("Land of Palms"). It is notable that Fra Mauro knew of the error of Henry the Navigator's captains about the Daklha inlet, which Mauro carefully labels "
Reodor" ("Rio do Ouro", Western Sahara), distinctly from the "Canal del Oro" (Senegal River).
European contact Christian Europeans soon began attempting to find the sea route to the mouth of the Senegal. The first known effort may have been by the
Genoese brothers
Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi, who set out down the coast in 1291 in a pair of ships (nothing more is heard of them). In 1346, the
Majorcan sailor,
Jaume Ferrer set out on a galley with the explicit objective of finding the "River of Gold" (''Riu de l'Or''), where he heard that most people along its shores were engaged in the collection of gold and that the river was wide and deep enough for the largest ships. Nothing more is heard of him either. In 1402, after establishing the first European colony on the
Canary Islands, the French Norman adventurers
Jean de Béthencourt and
Gadifer de la Salle set about immediately probing the African coast, looking for directions to the mouth of Senegal. The project of finding the Senegal was taken up in the 1420s by the
Portuguese Prince
Henry the Navigator, who invested heavily to reach it. In 1434, one of Henry's captains,
Gil Eanes, finally surpassed Cape Bojador and returned to tell about it. Henry immediately dispatched a follow-up mission in 1435, under Gil Eanes and
Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia. Going down the coast, they turned around the
al-Dakhla peninsula in the
Western Sahara and emerged into an inlet, which they excitedly believed to be the mouth of the Senegal River. The name they mistakenly bestowed upon the inlet - "Rio do Ouro" - is a name it would
remain stuck with down to the 20th century. Realizing the mistake, Henry kept pressing his captains further down the coast, and in 1445, the Portuguese captain
Nuno Tristão finally reached the
Langue de Barbarie, where he noticed the desert end and the treeline begin, and the population change from 'tawny'
Sanhaja Berbers to 'black'
Wolof people. Bad weather or lack of supplies prevented Tristão from actually reaching the mouth of the Senegal River, but he rushed back to Portugal to report he had finally found the "Land of the Blacks" (
Terra dos Negros), and that the "Nile" was surely nearby. Shortly after (possibly still within that same year) another captain,
Dinis Dias (sometimes given as Dinis Fernandes) was the first known European since antiquity to finally reach the mouth of the Senegal River. However, Dias did not sail upriver, but instead kept sailing down the
Grande Côte to the bay of
Dakar. The very next year, in 1446, the Portuguese
slave-raiding fleet of
Lançarote de Freitas arrived at the mouth of the Senegal. One of its captains,
Estêvão Afonso, volunteered to take a
launch to explore upriver for settlements, thus becoming the first European to actually enter the Senegal river. He didn't get very far. Venturing ashore at one point along the river bank, Afonso tried to kidnap two Wolof children from a woodsman's hut. But he ran into their father, who proceeded to chase the Portuguese back to their launch and gave them such a beating that the explorers gave up on going any further, and turned back to the waiting caravels. Sometime between 1448 and 1455, the Portuguese captain
Lourenço Dias opened regular trade contact on the Senegal River, with the
Wolof statelets of
Waalo (near the mouth of the Senegal River) and
Cayor (a little below that), drumming up a profitable business exchanging Mediterranean goods (notably, horses) for gold and slaves. Chronicler
Gomes Eanes de Zurara, writing in 1453, still called it the "Nile River", but
Alvise Cadamosto, writing in the 1460s, was already calling it the "Senega" , and it is denoted as
Rio do Çanagà on most subsequent Portuguese maps of the age. Cadamosto relates the legend that both the Senegal and the Egyptian Nile were branches of the Biblical
Gihon River that stems from the
Garden of Eden and flows through
Ethiopia. He also notes that the Senegal was called "the Niger" by the ancients - probably a reference to
Ptolemy's legendary 'Nigir' (Νιγειρ) (below the Gir), which would be later identified by
Leo Africanus with the modern
Niger River. Much the same story is repeated by
Marmol in 1573, with the additional note that both the Senegal River and
Gambia River were tributaries of the
Niger River. However, the contemporary African atlas of
Venetian cartographer
Livio Sanuto, published in 1588, sketches the Senegal, the Niger and the Gambia as three separate, parallel rivers. region, detail from the map of Guillaume Delisle (1707), which still assumes the Senegal connected to the Niger; this would be corrected in subsequent edititions of Delisle's map (1722, 1727), where it was shown ending at a lake, south of the Niger. Portuguese chronicler
João de Barros (writing in 1552) says the river's original local
Wolof name was
Ovedech (which according to one source, comes from "vi-dekh", Wolof for "this river"). His contemporary,
Damião de Góis (1567) records it as
Sonedech (from "sunu dekh", Wolof for "our river"). Writing in 1573, the Spanish geographer
Luis del Marmol Carvajal asserts that the
Portuguese called it
Zenega, the 'Zeneges' (Berber
Zenaga) called it the
Zenedec, the 'Gelofes' (
Wolofs) call it
Dengueh, the 'Tucorones' (
Fula Toucouleur) called it
Mayo, the 'Çaragoles' (
Soninke Sarakole of
Ngalam) called it
Colle and further along (again, Marmol assuming Senegal was connected to the Niger), the people of Bagamo' (
Bambara of
Bamako?) called it
Zimbala (Jimbala?) and the people of
Timbuktu called it the
Yça. == Etymology ==