of this change of opinion may be said to date from
the capture of the old African city of Benin by the British military
forces in the year 1897. The economic and political aspects of the
incident do not concern us here, but from an anthropological point of
view it proved to be one of the most important incidents of the
nineteenth century. For as Ling Roth,[2] the noted traveler and
ethnologist, has said, "the taking of Benin City opened up to us the
knowledge of the existence of hitherto unknown African craft, the
productions of which will hold their own among some of the best
specimens of antiquity of modern times."

Many of these objects of art were carried away from Benin by the
members of the invading expedition to Europe, where they created a
profound impression and astounding surprise in scientific circles
throughout the continent. C. H. Read, in a paper before the
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, on the "Art of
Benin City," the year following their discovery, says: "It need
scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of
art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find."[3]

Just about this time, and continuing down to the present day, a number
of Oriental scholars began to bring out modern language translations
of the works of numerous Arab writers bearing upon African
history--chief among them being the works of El Bekri, Ibn Batuta and
Ibn Khaldoun. The most important, however, at least from one angle,
was a translation of the _Tarikh es Sudan_, or _The History of the
Sudan_, which is not the work of an Arab at all, but the joint work of
several Sudanese blacks. In its original form it was written both in
Arabic and in the Songhay languages. The book was translated into
French by M. Houdas, the eminent French professor of the Oriental
School of Languages of Paris.

"The book," says Lugard,[4] "is a wonderful document, the
narrative of which deals mainly with the modern history of the
Songhay Empire, relating the rise of this black civilization
there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and its decadence
up to the middle of the seventeenth century.... But it is not
merely an authentic narrative. It is for the unconscious light
which it sheds upon the life, manners, politics and literature of
the country that it is valuable. Above all, it possesses the
crowning quality displayed usually in creative poetry alo