Tomini
Tomini. The Tomini of Indonesia occupy the northern Sulawesi peninsula from Donggala to Gorontalo. The name “Tomini” is both a geographic and linguistic designation. Geographically, Tomini is a thin strip of land which borders the western edge of Tomini Bay. Linguistically, Tomini is a subgroup of western Central Sulawesi languages which include Toli-toli, Dondo, Bolano, Tinombo, Kasinbar, Dampelas and Ndau. Although linguists formerly thought all Tomini languages were mutually intelligible and the different names merely referred to dialects, recent research has asserted that each group forms a separate language. Supposedly these multiple languages originated from the area’s many political trading empires, which remained historically and culturally insulated from each other until Islam unified them in the sixteenth century.
Ninety percent of the Tomini are Sunni Muslims, the rest being animist and Christian. All of the Muslims live along the coast rather than in the mountains, which span the center of the area and are home for animists and Christians. Highlanders cultivate dry rice, grow maize and sago and gather rattan and damar (resin) for trade along the coast. The Muslim coastal people work on clove, copra and palm plantations, cultivate wet rice fields or work as traders, lumberers or sailors.
The cultural history of the area can be divided into four periods: (1) the coming of Islam; (2) the Dutch colonial period; (3) the Japanese occupation and (4) post-independence. Islam came to Tomini in three waves. The first arrived from the eastern Indonesian trading empire of Ternate in the sixteenth century, the second from the southern Sulawesi traders, the Bugis and the Mandar, beginning in the sixteenth and increasing in the seventeenth century, and the third in the eighteenth century from Minangkabau (Sumatran) travellers.
Islam first penetrated and unified Tomini’s disparate kingdoms by converting the nobility, especially the rajas’ or kings’ families, who after conversion married each other rather than non-Muslims within the realm. The initial ties between kingdoms were thus between elite Muslims.
Even though all the pre-Islamic kingdoms were distinct, they shared common rules for political and economic organization, including maintenance of regional sovereignty through a system of tribute. Subjects either gave labor service or prestige objects to the ruler indicating they were willing to be of service to the stronger raja. The raja’s right to rule or his sign of power was signified by a collection of sacred regalia such as gold objects, trays and umbrellas which were inherited from the former ruler. Each of the kingdoms ruled with their own particular regalia until Muslim rulers from outside the Tomini area introduced new royal symbols. In 1556, the Muslim raja, Harian of Ternate, wished to develop new trade networks on the eastern and northwestern coasts of Tomini, especially in Moutong and Buoll, which were rich in gold deposits. As a sign of friendship, Raja Harian gave a scepter and a letter written in Arabic script to each of the rajas of Buol, Mouton and Toli-Toli. The Tomini rajas regarded these gifts as sacred. In acknowledgment, the Buol raja sailed to Ternate in 1595, presenting a golden goal to Harian on behalf of these northern Tomini rajas.
This exchange of gifts signalled the beginning of an epoch in which the Tomini rajas fell under the influence of the Ternate kingdom and also accepted the ruler’s religion. Tomini kings changed their official titles to Arabic ones, their families began to recite Islamic prayers in the home and they sought sons in other distant Islamic kingdoms to the north to marry their daughters and consolidate power.
The second wave of Islam actually began at the same time as the first, but rather than Ternate traders brought Islam and unified the southwestern coast of Tomini. This pattern was almost identical to that of the Ternate kingdom’s but did not reach a peak until later in the seventeenth century. The result was an area divided into two parts, the northern influenced by Ternate, the southern by the south Sulawesi polities of Goa, Bone and Luwu.
Gradually the Bugis and Mandar realms became more powerful than the waning Ternate so that by the early seventeenth century the Tomini nobles oriented themselves towards the southern rulers, especially the Mandar rajas. During this time, a strict class system emerged such that nobles were divided into two groups, both Islamic. The first were those with direct genealogical and patrilineal connections to the Mandar nobility and inheriting the right to rule. The second group of nobles was those who were not so related to the Mandar rajas and whose children could not inherit governmental office.
The second wave was significant in the bifurcation of the noble class, the shift from matrilateral inheritance of property and right to office to an emphasis on patrilater inheritance. In addition, funeral rites became more Islamic, especially in regard to stipulations for washing and praying over the corpse and using the white shrough over it. General house architecture (on stilts), clothing styles (sarongs) and types of gifts used in elite brideprice exchanges (coins, trays, krisses and plates) were all adopted from the south Sulawesi Mandar and Bugis society and persist to the present. Generally, however, the Muslim nobility still recited their prayers in private. There were no mosques, organized clergy or madrasas, Islam was for the nobility.
It was not until the third wave of conversion that Islam became more popular. In the eighteenth century, Minangkabau visitors acting as Muslim missionaries travelled throughout the Tomini area introducing Islam to the commoners. Public mosques were built, and each area acquired its own imam. The vassals paid religious taxes to the rajas as they had always done, but now Muslim subjects paid tribute following the sharia and not pre-Islamic law, adat. Although the rajas began reciting their prayers with the masses in the mosques, they still retained esoteric religious knowledge which distinguished noble from commoner. It was always the raja who started Ramadan by quoting Arabic pantunspassed down from Ternate andBugis contacts. It was during this period that nobler and wealthier Tomini reportedly first made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Although Islam was firmly established in the Tomini area by the eighteenth century, its character was drastically affected by European contact, especially after the Dutch, who had been attracted by the region’s gold mines, became the effective ruling power. In response to European contact, Islam became a political rallying point of anti-colonial sentiment. For instance, the Dutch East Indies Company made frequent stops in Buol and Toli-toli, trading rice for gold. Early in the 1800s, one agricultural season was particularly unfruitful so the raja raised the amount of rice imported in exchange for gold. The Dutch head officer was enraged that the raja had violated the specified trade agreement and declared that if the Buol raja were indeed so hungry he could eat pork. Naturally, the raja refused so the Dutch officer ordered his public execution. The raja was tied to two horses, which ran in opposite directions until his body was split apart. The people rebelled, gold trade in the area was suspended and Islam became the vehicle through which anti-Dutch sentiments were expressed.
In 1862, the Dutch built a fortress in Tinombo and attempted to control the island. Each raja was asked to sign a trade contract relinquishing all regional authority to the Dutch. The southern Mandar had already been defeated by the Dutch military forces and could not longer help their Tomini vassals. The Dutch did not defeat the Tominis until 1904. By then, all the Tomini rajas had been forced to sign the contracts, surrendering their authority. The Dutch let them keep their Arabic titles (and gave them Dutch titles as well) in order to take advantage of the raja’s access to the people’s labor service. Because the local system of religious taxes required commoners to give a certain amount of labor service (or goods, if they could afford it) to their raja, the Dtuch forced the rajas to order their own people to work on plantation and public works projects. Coffee, coconut and palm plantations were begun by the colonial government throughout the coastal Tomini area. Wet rice agriculture was introduced to supplement the traditional maize, sago and dry rice production, and an elaborate network of roads and bridges was built to connect the region and facilitate commercial transport -- all using the forced labor of the commoners.
In several regions the people directed their anger at the severity of the forced labor against the rajas. In some regions, however, the rajas helped the people as best they could by covertly supporting local chapters of nationalist religious parties. For instance, in Buol and Toli-toli, a chapter of Syarekat Islam was founded in 1916; a chapter was started in Donggala and Parigi the next year. The Syarekat Islam movement spread quickly into all of the Tomini area unti the Dutch arrested and exiled its leaders and threatened to execute the rajas who were suspected of allowing it to persist. In 1917, the Raja of Moutong was arrested. In 1919, the people rebelled but were quickly squelched. Some local commoners escaped into the mountains.
Persecution by the Dutch served to strengthen the Islamic Party in Tomini, its major focus being anti-Dutch and nationalistic. In 1941, in Toli-toli a large rebellion broke out in response to being forced to work a full day during Ramadan. The precipitating event occurred when several laborers, weak from hunger and exhaustion, ostensibly unable to work, escaped from the plantation to the mosque. Dutch overseers marched into the mosque and shot the laborers while they were praying. Total rebellion broke out. The Dutch eventually regained control, but the families of the rebels fled to the mountains.
In the same year, 1942, the Japanese ousted the Dutch, but the situation for the Tomini people changed little. The rajas were given Japanese names rather than Dutch names and were required to work as slaves on the plantations alongside the commoners. In 1943, another rebellion broke out in Toli-toli, again because the Japanese colonialists had violated religious mores. Underground Islamic groups grew more fanatic, culminating in the declaration of fisabillah, or holy war. They sabotaged the bridges and roads so that plantation products could not be marketed. In 1945, the Dutch returned but were unable to reopen the plantations as viable economic units before independence was declared.
Tomini remained quiet during the early 1950s as the people adjusted to Indonesian national concerns. Some of the former rajas and their families found positions in the new bureaucracy. Others became private entrepreneurs. In the late 1950s, separatist movements against the Indonesian government of Sukarno were led by youth groups throughout the entire island of Sulawesi. In the Tomini region this reached a peak with the Permesta Rebellion of the 1960s. Reportedly coconut farmers joined the movement initiated by the “Parmesta rebels” because they received so little return for their work. Without a renewed transportation system, laborers were exploited by private businessmen. Farmers quit working, and for several years the area produced no marketable products.
After the 1960s, the government made an effort to integrate the area into the national and international economic system. For instance, government cooperatives for poor farmers were established to encourage continued production. New forms of transportation were subsidized by the government. The trans-Sulawesi highway, which runs along the east coast of Tomini, was opened in 1980, and on the west coast, Buol and Toli-toli have airfields in addition to their harbors. In the 1970s, the cash crop sector of the region’s economy blossomed. Cloves were introduced in large plantations and were successful (in the Toli-toli area, clove trees produce three times more often than in any other region. National and international lumber firms established themselves throughout the area, and rice production increased to the point that the area has the highest ratio of the rice per person in both north and central Sulawesi combined.
Tomini. The Tomini of Indonesia occupy the northern Sulawesi peninsula from Donggala to Gorontalo. The name “Tomini” is both a geographic and linguistic designation. Geographically, Tomini is a thin strip of land which borders the western edge of Tomini Bay. Linguistically, Tomini is a subgroup of western Central Sulawesi languages which include Toli-toli, Dondo, Bolano, Tinombo, Kasinbar, Dampelas and Ndau. Although linguists formerly thought all Tomini languages were mutually intelligible and the different names merely referred to dialects, recent research has asserted that each group forms a separate language. Supposedly these multiple languages originated from the area’s many political trading empires, which remained historically and culturally insulated from each other until Islam unified them in the sixteenth century.
Ninety percent of the Tomini are Sunni Muslims, the rest being animist and Christian. All of the Muslims live along the coast rather than in the mountains, which span the center of the area and are home for animists and Christians. Highlanders cultivate dry rice, grow maize and sago and gather rattan and damar (resin) for trade along the coast. The Muslim coastal people work on clove, copra and palm plantations, cultivate wet rice fields or work as traders, lumberers or sailors.
The cultural history of the area can be divided into four periods: (1) the coming of Islam; (2) the Dutch colonial period; (3) the Japanese occupation and (4) post-independence. Islam came to Tomini in three waves. The first arrived from the eastern Indonesian trading empire of Ternate in the sixteenth century, the second from the southern Sulawesi traders, the Bugis and the Mandar, beginning in the sixteenth and increasing in the seventeenth century, and the third in the eighteenth century from Minangkabau (Sumatran) travellers.
Islam first penetrated and unified Tomini’s disparate kingdoms by converting the nobility, especially the rajas’ or kings’ families, who after conversion married each other rather than non-Muslims within the realm. The initial ties between kingdoms were thus between elite Muslims.
Even though all the pre-Islamic kingdoms were distinct, they shared common rules for political and economic organization, including maintenance of regional sovereignty through a system of tribute. Subjects either gave labor service or prestige objects to the ruler indicating they were willing to be of service to the stronger raja. The raja’s right to rule or his sign of power was signified by a collection of sacred regalia such as gold objects, trays and umbrellas which were inherited from the former ruler. Each of the kingdoms ruled with their own particular regalia until Muslim rulers from outside the Tomini area introduced new royal symbols. In 1556, the Muslim raja, Harian of Ternate, wished to develop new trade networks on the eastern and northwestern coasts of Tomini, especially in Moutong and Buoll, which were rich in gold deposits. As a sign of friendship, Raja Harian gave a scepter and a letter written in Arabic script to each of the rajas of Buol, Mouton and Toli-Toli. The Tomini rajas regarded these gifts as sacred. In acknowledgment, the Buol raja sailed to Ternate in 1595, presenting a golden goal to Harian on behalf of these northern Tomini rajas.
This exchange of gifts signalled the beginning of an epoch in which the Tomini rajas fell under the influence of the Ternate kingdom and also accepted the ruler’s religion. Tomini kings changed their official titles to Arabic ones, their families began to recite Islamic prayers in the home and they sought sons in other distant Islamic kingdoms to the north to marry their daughters and consolidate power.
The second wave of Islam actually began at the same time as the first, but rather than Ternate traders brought Islam and unified the southwestern coast of Tomini. This pattern was almost identical to that of the Ternate kingdom’s but did not reach a peak until later in the seventeenth century. The result was an area divided into two parts, the northern influenced by Ternate, the southern by the south Sulawesi polities of Goa, Bone and Luwu.
Gradually the Bugis and Mandar realms became more powerful than the waning Ternate so that by the early seventeenth century the Tomini nobles oriented themselves towards the southern rulers, especially the Mandar rajas. During this time, a strict class system emerged such that nobles were divided into two groups, both Islamic. The first were those with direct genealogical and patrilineal connections to the Mandar nobility and inheriting the right to rule. The second group of nobles was those who were not so related to the Mandar rajas and whose children could not inherit governmental office.
The second wave was significant in the bifurcation of the noble class, the shift from matrilateral inheritance of property and right to office to an emphasis on patrilater inheritance. In addition, funeral rites became more Islamic, especially in regard to stipulations for washing and praying over the corpse and using the white shrough over it. General house architecture (on stilts), clothing styles (sarongs) and types of gifts used in elite brideprice exchanges (coins, trays, krisses and plates) were all adopted from the south Sulawesi Mandar and Bugis society and persist to the present. Generally, however, the Muslim nobility still recited their prayers in private. There were no mosques, organized clergy or madrasas, Islam was for the nobility.
It was not until the third wave of conversion that Islam became more popular. In the eighteenth century, Minangkabau visitors acting as Muslim missionaries travelled throughout the Tomini area introducing Islam to the commoners. Public mosques were built, and each area acquired its own imam. The vassals paid religious taxes to the rajas as they had always done, but now Muslim subjects paid tribute following the sharia and not pre-Islamic law, adat. Although the rajas began reciting their prayers with the masses in the mosques, they still retained esoteric religious knowledge which distinguished noble from commoner. It was always the raja who started Ramadan by quoting Arabic pantunspassed down from Ternate andBugis contacts. It was during this period that nobler and wealthier Tomini reportedly first made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Although Islam was firmly established in the Tomini area by the eighteenth century, its character was drastically affected by European contact, especially after the Dutch, who had been attracted by the region’s gold mines, became the effective ruling power. In response to European contact, Islam became a political rallying point of anti-colonial sentiment. For instance, the Dutch East Indies Company made frequent stops in Buol and Toli-toli, trading rice for gold. Early in the 1800s, one agricultural season was particularly unfruitful so the raja raised the amount of rice imported in exchange for gold. The Dutch head officer was enraged that the raja had violated the specified trade agreement and declared that if the Buol raja were indeed so hungry he could eat pork. Naturally, the raja refused so the Dutch officer ordered his public execution. The raja was tied to two horses, which ran in opposite directions until his body was split apart. The people rebelled, gold trade in the area was suspended and Islam became the vehicle through which anti-Dutch sentiments were expressed.
In 1862, the Dutch built a fortress in Tinombo and attempted to control the island. Each raja was asked to sign a trade contract relinquishing all regional authority to the Dutch. The southern Mandar had already been defeated by the Dutch military forces and could not longer help their Tomini vassals. The Dutch did not defeat the Tominis until 1904. By then, all the Tomini rajas had been forced to sign the contracts, surrendering their authority. The Dutch let them keep their Arabic titles (and gave them Dutch titles as well) in order to take advantage of the raja’s access to the people’s labor service. Because the local system of religious taxes required commoners to give a certain amount of labor service (or goods, if they could afford it) to their raja, the Dtuch forced the rajas to order their own people to work on plantation and public works projects. Coffee, coconut and palm plantations were begun by the colonial government throughout the coastal Tomini area. Wet rice agriculture was introduced to supplement the traditional maize, sago and dry rice production, and an elaborate network of roads and bridges was built to connect the region and facilitate commercial transport -- all using the forced labor of the commoners.
In several regions the people directed their anger at the severity of the forced labor against the rajas. In some regions, however, the rajas helped the people as best they could by covertly supporting local chapters of nationalist religious parties. For instance, in Buol and Toli-toli, a chapter of Syarekat Islam was founded in 1916; a chapter was started in Donggala and Parigi the next year. The Syarekat Islam movement spread quickly into all of the Tomini area unti the Dutch arrested and exiled its leaders and threatened to execute the rajas who were suspected of allowing it to persist. In 1917, the Raja of Moutong was arrested. In 1919, the people rebelled but were quickly squelched. Some local commoners escaped into the mountains.
Persecution by the Dutch served to strengthen the Islamic Party in Tomini, its major focus being anti-Dutch and nationalistic. In 1941, in Toli-toli a large rebellion broke out in response to being forced to work a full day during Ramadan. The precipitating event occurred when several laborers, weak from hunger and exhaustion, ostensibly unable to work, escaped from the plantation to the mosque. Dutch overseers marched into the mosque and shot the laborers while they were praying. Total rebellion broke out. The Dutch eventually regained control, but the families of the rebels fled to the mountains.
In the same year, 1942, the Japanese ousted the Dutch, but the situation for the Tomini people changed little. The rajas were given Japanese names rather than Dutch names and were required to work as slaves on the plantations alongside the commoners. In 1943, another rebellion broke out in Toli-toli, again because the Japanese colonialists had violated religious mores. Underground Islamic groups grew more fanatic, culminating in the declaration of fisabillah, or holy war. They sabotaged the bridges and roads so that plantation products could not be marketed. In 1945, the Dutch returned but were unable to reopen the plantations as viable economic units before independence was declared.
Tomini remained quiet during the early 1950s as the people adjusted to Indonesian national concerns. Some of the former rajas and their families found positions in the new bureaucracy. Others became private entrepreneurs. In the late 1950s, separatist movements against the Indonesian government of Sukarno were led by youth groups throughout the entire island of Sulawesi. In the Tomini region this reached a peak with the Permesta Rebellion of the 1960s. Reportedly coconut farmers joined the movement initiated by the “Parmesta rebels” because they received so little return for their work. Without a renewed transportation system, laborers were exploited by private businessmen. Farmers quit working, and for several years the area produced no marketable products.
After the 1960s, the government made an effort to integrate the area into the national and international economic system. For instance, government cooperatives for poor farmers were established to encourage continued production. New forms of transportation were subsidized by the government. The trans-Sulawesi highway, which runs along the east coast of Tomini, was opened in 1980, and on the west coast, Buol and Toli-toli have airfields in addition to their harbors. In the 1970s, the cash crop sector of the region’s economy blossomed. Cloves were introduced in large plantations and were successful (in the Toli-toli area, clove trees produce three times more often than in any other region. National and international lumber firms established themselves throughout the area, and rice production increased to the point that the area has the highest ratio of the rice per person in both north and central Sulawesi combined.
Topal ‘Othman Pasha
Topal ‘Othman Pasha (1692-1733). Ottoman Grand Vizier. In 1733, he defeated Nadir Shah Afshar and drove him out of Baghdad. Some time later Topal was severely defeated and lost his life in the battle.
Topal Osman Pasha was born in Morea and was educated in the Seraglio atİstanbul. At the age of twenty-six, he attained the rank of Beylerbeyi; and was sent on a mission to the Governor of Egypt. On the voyage his ship encountered a Spanish corsair and Osman was captured after a fight in the course of which he received a wound which lamed him for life, whence he obtained his name of Topal. He became Grand Vizier on September 21, 1731. Topal Osman was superseded in the Grand Vizierate in 1732. Before Topal Osman had been long in retirement, the military victories of the Persian army of Nader Shah made the sultan again require his services. He was sent into Asia as generaIissimo of the Turkish armies in that continent, and was invested with almost unlimited powers. He marched to encounter Nader and on July 19, 1733, defeated him in a pitched battle, near the banks of the Tigris close to Baghdad. The victory thus gained by Topal Osman on the Tigris, rescued Baghdad and he again defeated the Persians, near Leilan, in the same year. But in a third battle with Nader, near Kirkuk, the Turks were desicively defeated by Persians; and Topal Osman himself died fighting sword in hand. His body was borne off the field by some of his attendants, and was afterwards brought for burial to İstanbul.
Topal ‘Othman Pasha (1692-1733). Ottoman Grand Vizier. In 1733, he defeated Nadir Shah Afshar and drove him out of Baghdad. Some time later Topal was severely defeated and lost his life in the battle.
Topal Osman Pasha was born in Morea and was educated in the Seraglio atİstanbul. At the age of twenty-six, he attained the rank of Beylerbeyi; and was sent on a mission to the Governor of Egypt. On the voyage his ship encountered a Spanish corsair and Osman was captured after a fight in the course of which he received a wound which lamed him for life, whence he obtained his name of Topal. He became Grand Vizier on September 21, 1731. Topal Osman was superseded in the Grand Vizierate in 1732. Before Topal Osman had been long in retirement, the military victories of the Persian army of Nader Shah made the sultan again require his services. He was sent into Asia as generaIissimo of the Turkish armies in that continent, and was invested with almost unlimited powers. He marched to encounter Nader and on July 19, 1733, defeated him in a pitched battle, near the banks of the Tigris close to Baghdad. The victory thus gained by Topal Osman on the Tigris, rescued Baghdad and he again defeated the Persians, near Leilan, in the same year. But in a third battle with Nader, near Kirkuk, the Turks were desicively defeated by Persians; and Topal Osman himself died fighting sword in hand. His body was borne off the field by some of his attendants, and was afterwards brought for burial to İstanbul.
Topal ‘Othman Pasha
Topal ‘Othman Pasha (1804-1874). Ottoman govenor of Bosnia. He resided at Sarajevo where he built the so-called Cengic villa, a splendid country house. His governorship from 1861 until 1869 may be described as a golden period in the history of Bosnia under the Ottomans. He deprived the powerful Begs of their influence, placed Bosnian notables in public offices, raised the status of artisans and small traders, and protected the common people. He devoted special attention to education, endowed the mosque of Ghazi Khosrew with a splendid library and instituted printing works.
Topal ‘Othman Pasha (1804-1874). Ottoman govenor of Bosnia. He resided at Sarajevo where he built the so-called Cengic villa, a splendid country house. His governorship from 1861 until 1869 may be described as a golden period in the history of Bosnia under the Ottomans. He deprived the powerful Begs of their influence, placed Bosnian notables in public offices, raised the status of artisans and small traders, and protected the common people. He devoted special attention to education, endowed the mosque of Ghazi Khosrew with a splendid library and instituted printing works.
Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din
Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din (Ghiyath al-Din Toqtamish) (Tokhtamysh) (d.1405/1406). Khan of the Golden Horde (r.1376-1395). Before his accession to the throne, he went to Timur at Samarkand, who lent him his support against his brothers. In 1381, he sacked and destroyed Moscow, imposing another century of Tatar rule. His first hostile act against Timur dates from 1383, when he had coins struck in his own name in Khwarazm, and in 1386 he sent an army against Tabriz, which was laid waste in a terrible fashion. The next year, he invaded Azerbaijan, but Timur continued to show much restraint. In 1387, Toqtamish invaded the heart of Timur’s empire, reached the Oxus and besieged Bukhara. In 1391, Timur reacted, defeated the khan at Qunduzca, advanced as far as the Volga but did not attack the kingdom of the Golden Horde. In 1393, Timur had sent a mission to Egypt but the Mameluke Sultan Barquq had his ambassador murdered. In 1394 and 1395, Toqtamish sent missions to Egypt to form an alliance against Timur. From Mahmudabad the latter again sent an envoy to Toqtamish, but the reply proved unsatisfactory. In 1395, the khan was defeated on the Terek River in Georgia, and Timur sacked Azov, Astrakhan and Saray. The next year he went back to Azerbaijan, and Toqtamish returned to his throne, but he had to flee to the prince of Lithuania. He sent the assurance of his penitence and an appeal for pardon. Timur promised to come to the land of the Golden Horde after his campaign against China and to restore his throne to Toqtamish. But Timur died in 1404, and Toqtamish in 1406.
Tokhtamysh was the prominent khan of the White Horde, who briefly unified the White Horde and Blue Horde subdivisions of the Golden Horde into a single state. He was a descendant of Genghis Khan's eldest grandson, Orda Khan or his brother Tuqa-Timur.
Tokhtamysh appears in history in 1376, trying to overthrow his uncle Urus Khan, ruler of the White Horde, and fleeing to the great Timur. Tokhtamysh outlived Urus and both his sons and forcefully ascended the throne of the White Horde in 1378 with Timur's backing.
Tokhtamysh dreamed of emulating his ancestors and made plans to reunite the Ulus Jochi. In 1380, he invaded the Blue Horde by fording across the Volga. The ruler of the Blue Horde, Mamai, was killed shortly after the Battle of Kulikovo, making Tokhtamysh's victory over the horde all the easier.
Having united the Blue and White Hordes into the Golden Horde in 1382 Tokhtamysh led a successful campaign against Russia as a punishment for the Kulikovo defeat - setting back, though not ending, the Russian aspiration to free themselves of Mongol rule. In just six years, Tokhtamysh had reunified the Mongol lands from Crimea to Lake Balkhash.
Believing he could emulate the successes of Genghis Khan himself, in 1385 Tokhtamysh, with an army of 50,000 (or five tumens), invaded Persia and took Tabriz. Returning north they took 200,000 slaves from Caucasus, including tens of thousands of Armenians from the districts of Parskahayk, Syunik, and Artsakh. As Tokhtamysh moved north from the Caucasus, Timur annexed Azerbaijan and Persia to his own expanding kingdom. Furious, Tokhtamysh turned back and made war on his former ally.
Eventually, Tokhtamysh conceded defeat and withdrew to the steppe. However, in 1387 he suddenly invaded Transoxiana, the heart of Timur's realm. Unfortunately for Tokhtamysh, heavy snow forced him back to the steppe.
In 1395, the scenario reached its climax as Timur attacked the Golden Horde and defeated Tokhtamysh at the Terek. Timur sacked the capital, Sarai Berke, vassalized the Golden Horde, and placed a puppet ruler, Koirichak, on the throne of Orda's Ulus and appointed Temur Qutlugh khan of the Horde.
Tokhtamysh escaped to the Ukrainian steppes and asked for help from the Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania. In the great Battle of the Vorskla River (1399) the combined forces of Tokhtamysh and Vytautas were defeated by two of Timur's generals, khan Temur Qutlugh and emir (murza, visir) Edigu. The defeated Tokhtamysh was killed in Tyumen by Edigu's men in 1405.
He was the last khan who minted coins with Mongolian script.
Ghiyath al-Din Toqtamish see Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din
Tokhtamysh see Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din
Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din (Ghiyath al-Din Toqtamish) (Tokhtamysh) (d.1405/1406). Khan of the Golden Horde (r.1376-1395). Before his accession to the throne, he went to Timur at Samarkand, who lent him his support against his brothers. In 1381, he sacked and destroyed Moscow, imposing another century of Tatar rule. His first hostile act against Timur dates from 1383, when he had coins struck in his own name in Khwarazm, and in 1386 he sent an army against Tabriz, which was laid waste in a terrible fashion. The next year, he invaded Azerbaijan, but Timur continued to show much restraint. In 1387, Toqtamish invaded the heart of Timur’s empire, reached the Oxus and besieged Bukhara. In 1391, Timur reacted, defeated the khan at Qunduzca, advanced as far as the Volga but did not attack the kingdom of the Golden Horde. In 1393, Timur had sent a mission to Egypt but the Mameluke Sultan Barquq had his ambassador murdered. In 1394 and 1395, Toqtamish sent missions to Egypt to form an alliance against Timur. From Mahmudabad the latter again sent an envoy to Toqtamish, but the reply proved unsatisfactory. In 1395, the khan was defeated on the Terek River in Georgia, and Timur sacked Azov, Astrakhan and Saray. The next year he went back to Azerbaijan, and Toqtamish returned to his throne, but he had to flee to the prince of Lithuania. He sent the assurance of his penitence and an appeal for pardon. Timur promised to come to the land of the Golden Horde after his campaign against China and to restore his throne to Toqtamish. But Timur died in 1404, and Toqtamish in 1406.
Tokhtamysh was the prominent khan of the White Horde, who briefly unified the White Horde and Blue Horde subdivisions of the Golden Horde into a single state. He was a descendant of Genghis Khan's eldest grandson, Orda Khan or his brother Tuqa-Timur.
Tokhtamysh appears in history in 1376, trying to overthrow his uncle Urus Khan, ruler of the White Horde, and fleeing to the great Timur. Tokhtamysh outlived Urus and both his sons and forcefully ascended the throne of the White Horde in 1378 with Timur's backing.
Tokhtamysh dreamed of emulating his ancestors and made plans to reunite the Ulus Jochi. In 1380, he invaded the Blue Horde by fording across the Volga. The ruler of the Blue Horde, Mamai, was killed shortly after the Battle of Kulikovo, making Tokhtamysh's victory over the horde all the easier.
Having united the Blue and White Hordes into the Golden Horde in 1382 Tokhtamysh led a successful campaign against Russia as a punishment for the Kulikovo defeat - setting back, though not ending, the Russian aspiration to free themselves of Mongol rule. In just six years, Tokhtamysh had reunified the Mongol lands from Crimea to Lake Balkhash.
Believing he could emulate the successes of Genghis Khan himself, in 1385 Tokhtamysh, with an army of 50,000 (or five tumens), invaded Persia and took Tabriz. Returning north they took 200,000 slaves from Caucasus, including tens of thousands of Armenians from the districts of Parskahayk, Syunik, and Artsakh. As Tokhtamysh moved north from the Caucasus, Timur annexed Azerbaijan and Persia to his own expanding kingdom. Furious, Tokhtamysh turned back and made war on his former ally.
Eventually, Tokhtamysh conceded defeat and withdrew to the steppe. However, in 1387 he suddenly invaded Transoxiana, the heart of Timur's realm. Unfortunately for Tokhtamysh, heavy snow forced him back to the steppe.
In 1395, the scenario reached its climax as Timur attacked the Golden Horde and defeated Tokhtamysh at the Terek. Timur sacked the capital, Sarai Berke, vassalized the Golden Horde, and placed a puppet ruler, Koirichak, on the throne of Orda's Ulus and appointed Temur Qutlugh khan of the Horde.
Tokhtamysh escaped to the Ukrainian steppes and asked for help from the Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania. In the great Battle of the Vorskla River (1399) the combined forces of Tokhtamysh and Vytautas were defeated by two of Timur's generals, khan Temur Qutlugh and emir (murza, visir) Edigu. The defeated Tokhtamysh was killed in Tyumen by Edigu's men in 1405.
He was the last khan who minted coins with Mongolian script.
Ghiyath al-Din Toqtamish see Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din
Tokhtamysh see Toqtamish, Ghiyath al-Din
Torodbe
Torodbe. Term which originally applied to those who live from begging. The torodbe were designated the educated Islamic Tukulor -- the promoters of a victorious Islamic jihad and a new regime in Futa Toro (the middle valley of Senegal) at the end of the 18th century. The torodbe name was reserved for the cleric class in Futa Toro, but sometimes used, to signify other groups of clerics of Peuhl culture in West Africa. The term torodbe is the plural of the word torodo.
Torodbe. Term which originally applied to those who live from begging. The torodbe were designated the educated Islamic Tukulor -- the promoters of a victorious Islamic jihad and a new regime in Futa Toro (the middle valley of Senegal) at the end of the 18th century. The torodbe name was reserved for the cleric class in Futa Toro, but sometimes used, to signify other groups of clerics of Peuhl culture in West Africa. The term torodbe is the plural of the word torodo.
Totovents, Vahan
Totovents, Vahan (Vahan Totovents) (Vahan Hovhannesi Totovents) (September 1, 1889 - July 17, 1937). Armenian novelist and memoirist. Totovents was born in the small country town of Mezre in the province of Kharput. His first literary effort appeared in 1907 in a Smyrna weekly paper. In the following year, Totovents went to Constantinople and then proceeded abroad to Paris and to New York.
Totovents attended the University of Wisconsin. He returned to the Caucasus in 1915 to fight for the defence of Armenia against the Turks. In 1917 to 1918, Totovents edited a daily newspaper in Tbilisi, and wrote numerous short stories and literary studies.
In 1920, Totovents again left for America but returned in 1922 to settle in the newly founded Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, where Totovents developed into a leading writer of fiction, poetry and plays. When barely 48 years old, Totovents fell victim to the Stalin-Beria terror and was put to death.
Totovents is best known for his autobiographical Life on the Old Roman Road. Life on the Old Roman Road tells, in lyrical prose, of life in Turkish Armenia prior to 1915, when the Turks killed or deported Totovents’ fellow countrymen, and “the blue canopy of heaven collapsed like the turquoise dome of an ancient church during an earthquake”. From Totovents’ house, which lay on an ancient Roman highway, he could see oxen passing by with almond blossom decorating their horns; a camel caravan on its way from Mesopotamia; or on one occasion a mob of children pursuing the president of the town council as he emerged from the local whore’s abode.
Life on the Old Roman Road is rich in glimpses of Turkish provincial life before World War I. The book has many skilfully drawn character sketches, as of Totovents’ own father carefully trying on his tailor-made coffin shortly before his death. Nor does Totovents conceal the poverty and violence he witnessed in his childhood -- the beggars asleep on refuse heaps, the public executions, the lunatics beaten by their relatives to “cure”them. Such grim touches set off the general impression of a lovable people living out their last years before they fell victim to Turkish brutality.
Vahan Totovents was born in Kharpert, Western Armenia (modern Turkey). He studied in Armenia and Istanbul, then at Wisconsin University where he graduated in 1915. He was a volunteer on the Caucasian front during World War I, and served as the bodyguard, translator and secretary of General Andranik Ozanian, about whom he wrote memoires and published them in 1920. In Tbilisi, Totovents edited "Hayastan" paper, the official organ of Andranik.
After 1922 he lived in Yerevan, Soviet Armenia. In 1937 he became a victim of Stalinism. A prolific and multi-faceted writer, Vahan Totovents (1889-1937) produced with equal facility poems in prose and verse, short stories, novellas, novels, critical and biographical works, comedies, dramas, translations from Shakespeare, and a widely read and admired autobiographical work titled Life on the Old Roman Road.
Totovents was born in Mezre, a small town on the Euphrates in the province of Kharpert, where he studied under such masters of Armenian prose as Telgadinstsi and Rouben Zartarian. In his youth he traveled extensively in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he fought as a volunteer in the Caucasus during World War I. "I wanted to see my country liberated," he writes in his autobiographical sketch. "I saw instead its total destruction, and torrents of my countrymen's blood. I saw human suffering of such depth that there can be nothing deeper in this world. I saw nights gorged with blood. I saw men crazed by hunger; I saw bloodthirsty mobs attacking innocent men, women, and children, and I heard the howls of their terrified victims." Another two years (1920-22) of wandering followed - Istanbul, Paris, New York, whence he returned to Yerevan and where, in addition to over a dozen books, he published countless essays and articles in newspapers and periodicals. Criticized for failing to produce works with "proletarian" content, Totovents refused to conform and was eventually arrested and exiled to Siberia. Very little is known about his last years.
Vahan Totovents see Totovents, Vahan
Vahan Hovhannesi Totovents see Totovents, Vahan
Totovents, Vahan (Vahan Totovents) (Vahan Hovhannesi Totovents) (September 1, 1889 - July 17, 1937). Armenian novelist and memoirist. Totovents was born in the small country town of Mezre in the province of Kharput. His first literary effort appeared in 1907 in a Smyrna weekly paper. In the following year, Totovents went to Constantinople and then proceeded abroad to Paris and to New York.
Totovents attended the University of Wisconsin. He returned to the Caucasus in 1915 to fight for the defence of Armenia against the Turks. In 1917 to 1918, Totovents edited a daily newspaper in Tbilisi, and wrote numerous short stories and literary studies.
In 1920, Totovents again left for America but returned in 1922 to settle in the newly founded Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, where Totovents developed into a leading writer of fiction, poetry and plays. When barely 48 years old, Totovents fell victim to the Stalin-Beria terror and was put to death.
Totovents is best known for his autobiographical Life on the Old Roman Road. Life on the Old Roman Road tells, in lyrical prose, of life in Turkish Armenia prior to 1915, when the Turks killed or deported Totovents’ fellow countrymen, and “the blue canopy of heaven collapsed like the turquoise dome of an ancient church during an earthquake”. From Totovents’ house, which lay on an ancient Roman highway, he could see oxen passing by with almond blossom decorating their horns; a camel caravan on its way from Mesopotamia; or on one occasion a mob of children pursuing the president of the town council as he emerged from the local whore’s abode.
Life on the Old Roman Road is rich in glimpses of Turkish provincial life before World War I. The book has many skilfully drawn character sketches, as of Totovents’ own father carefully trying on his tailor-made coffin shortly before his death. Nor does Totovents conceal the poverty and violence he witnessed in his childhood -- the beggars asleep on refuse heaps, the public executions, the lunatics beaten by their relatives to “cure”them. Such grim touches set off the general impression of a lovable people living out their last years before they fell victim to Turkish brutality.
Vahan Totovents was born in Kharpert, Western Armenia (modern Turkey). He studied in Armenia and Istanbul, then at Wisconsin University where he graduated in 1915. He was a volunteer on the Caucasian front during World War I, and served as the bodyguard, translator and secretary of General Andranik Ozanian, about whom he wrote memoires and published them in 1920. In Tbilisi, Totovents edited "Hayastan" paper, the official organ of Andranik.
After 1922 he lived in Yerevan, Soviet Armenia. In 1937 he became a victim of Stalinism. A prolific and multi-faceted writer, Vahan Totovents (1889-1937) produced with equal facility poems in prose and verse, short stories, novellas, novels, critical and biographical works, comedies, dramas, translations from Shakespeare, and a widely read and admired autobiographical work titled Life on the Old Roman Road.
Totovents was born in Mezre, a small town on the Euphrates in the province of Kharpert, where he studied under such masters of Armenian prose as Telgadinstsi and Rouben Zartarian. In his youth he traveled extensively in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, he fought as a volunteer in the Caucasus during World War I. "I wanted to see my country liberated," he writes in his autobiographical sketch. "I saw instead its total destruction, and torrents of my countrymen's blood. I saw human suffering of such depth that there can be nothing deeper in this world. I saw nights gorged with blood. I saw men crazed by hunger; I saw bloodthirsty mobs attacking innocent men, women, and children, and I heard the howls of their terrified victims." Another two years (1920-22) of wandering followed - Istanbul, Paris, New York, whence he returned to Yerevan and where, in addition to over a dozen books, he published countless essays and articles in newspapers and periodicals. Criticized for failing to produce works with "proletarian" content, Totovents refused to conform and was eventually arrested and exiled to Siberia. Very little is known about his last years.
Vahan Totovents see Totovents, Vahan
Vahan Hovhannesi Totovents see Totovents, Vahan
Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Toure, Ahmed Sekou (Ahmed Sekou Toure) (Sekou Toure) (b. January 9, 1922, Faranah, French Guinea [now Guinea] - d. March 26, 1984, Cleveland, Ohio, United States). President of Guinea (1958-1984) and was one of Africa’s most radical politicians.
Ahmed Sekou Toure was among Africa’s youngest nationalist leaders. He claimed descent from the nineteenth century revolutionary leader, Samori Toure. He received his first education in Qur’anic school before entering primary school in Conakry, where he was expelled for leading a strike. He completed his education by correspondence. Afterwards he worked as a civil servant and became active in the unions. In 1945, Toure led a general strike. Toure was made a high union official, which led to his firing and brief imprisonment in 1947. Meanwhile he co-founded the Rassamblement Democratique Africain (RDA), an inter-territorial party which lobbied for self-government in the Francophonic colonies. In 1952, he was elected secretary-general of the RDA’s Guinea branch.
In 1953, Toure gained immense popularity when he led a successful general strike. At the same time, he was elected to Guinea’s territorial assembly, but failed the next year to win a seat in the French Chamber of Deputies, possibly because of rigged elections.
In 1955, Toure was elected mayor of Conakry. The following year, he and his fellow RDA candidates were elected to the French Chamber. In 1957, French reforms permitted the African colonies a measure of independence. Toure became vice-president of the governing council of Guinea, second in power to the French governor. Meanwhile he cut his union’s ties with its European, largely communist, affiliates.
Toure favored a federal form of government for Francophonic West Africa. He became a leading opponent of RDA leader Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast who opposedthe federation idea. More importantly, he advocated total independence -- a stance which only Niger’s Djibo Bakary shared publicly. In 1958, de Gaulle reluctantly permitted referendums in France’s overseas territories on the issue of independence versus continuing membership in the French community.
Guinea voted overwhelmingly for independence (the only territory to rebuke de Gaulle) and Toure became president at the end of the year. France reacted harshly, swiftly withdrawing technicians and equipment, which left Guinea in a precarious economic and administrative situation. Toure then sought development aid from Eastern bloc countries. His pro-independence stance helped lead other French African countries to independence by 1960.
Toure was an outspoken critic of colonialism and an advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1978, however, he directed a major policy shift by liberalizing Guinea’s socialist-oriented economy and re-establishing diplomatic relations with France, while seeking new trade with the West. His relations with other African countries were often strained, and his international reputation suffered from his long record of imprisoning political opponents and purging suspected plotters.
In the 1982 presidential election Toure’s government claimed he had received 100% of the votes. Two years later, he died while undergoing medical treatment in the United States for a heart attack. Within weeks the military seized power in Guinea. Although he was a controversial figure, Africa acknowledges Toure’s dominant role in the independence movement.
Although his parents were poor and uneducated, Touré claimed to be the grandson of Samory, a military leader who resisted French rule at the end of the 19th century, long after many other Africans had surrendered. Reared as a Muslim, Touré attended a French technical school at Conakry, from which he was expelled after one year for leading a food riot (1936). In 1940 Touré was hired as a clerk by a business firm, the Niger Français, and the following year took an administrative assignment in the postal service. There he developed a strong interest in the labor movement and organized the first successful strike, lasting 76 days, in French West Africa. In 1945 he became secretary-general of the Post and Telecommunications Workers’ Union and helped to found the Federation of Workers’ Unions of Guinea, linked to the World Federation of Trade Unions, of which he later became vice president.
Touré became active in politics in the mid-1940s and in 1946 helped Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) form the African Democratic Rally. Touré proved to be a powerful orator and was elected to the French National Assembly in 1951 as a representative from Guinea, but he was not allowed to take his seat. Re-elected in 1954, he was again barred. After being elected mayor of Conakry by a large majority in 1955, he was finally permitted to take his place in the National Assembly the following year. By the end of 1957 Touré had become vice president of the Executive Council of Guinea.
When French President Charles de Gaulle in 1958 offered French territories a referendum on whether to join a new federal community or to become independent, Touré and the Democratic Party of Guinea–African Democratic Rally led a successful campaign for independence. Guinea’s voting population overwhelmingly rejected de Gaulle’s offer and instead chose complete independence; Guinea was the only French colony in Africa that did not accept the proposal. On October 2, 1958, Guinea became the first independent French-speaking state in Africa, and shortly afterward Touré was elected its president. The French reacted by recalling all their professional people and civil servants and by removing all transportable equipment. Threatened by an economic breakdown, Touré accepted support from the communist bloc and at the same time sought help from Western nations.
In African affairs Touré was an ardent supporter of Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah and his program for African political unity, but a union of the two nations proclaimed in 1958 never became effective. When Nkrumah was deposed in 1966, Touré granted him asylum. After an unsuccessful invasion from neighboring Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) in 1971, he undertook a political purge and imposed severe restrictions on opposition forces in his country. He was re-elected without opposition in subsequent elections and ruled with an iron hand.
Despite his harsh domestic policies, Touré was viewed in international politics as a moderate Islamic leader. In 1982 he led the delegation sent by the Islāmic Conference Organization to mediate in the Iran-Iraq War. He also was a member in the Organization for African Unity (OAU).
Ahmed Sekou Toure see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Sekou Toure see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Toure, Sekou see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Toure, Ahmed Sekou (Ahmed Sekou Toure) (Sekou Toure) (b. January 9, 1922, Faranah, French Guinea [now Guinea] - d. March 26, 1984, Cleveland, Ohio, United States). President of Guinea (1958-1984) and was one of Africa’s most radical politicians.
Ahmed Sekou Toure was among Africa’s youngest nationalist leaders. He claimed descent from the nineteenth century revolutionary leader, Samori Toure. He received his first education in Qur’anic school before entering primary school in Conakry, where he was expelled for leading a strike. He completed his education by correspondence. Afterwards he worked as a civil servant and became active in the unions. In 1945, Toure led a general strike. Toure was made a high union official, which led to his firing and brief imprisonment in 1947. Meanwhile he co-founded the Rassamblement Democratique Africain (RDA), an inter-territorial party which lobbied for self-government in the Francophonic colonies. In 1952, he was elected secretary-general of the RDA’s Guinea branch.
In 1953, Toure gained immense popularity when he led a successful general strike. At the same time, he was elected to Guinea’s territorial assembly, but failed the next year to win a seat in the French Chamber of Deputies, possibly because of rigged elections.
In 1955, Toure was elected mayor of Conakry. The following year, he and his fellow RDA candidates were elected to the French Chamber. In 1957, French reforms permitted the African colonies a measure of independence. Toure became vice-president of the governing council of Guinea, second in power to the French governor. Meanwhile he cut his union’s ties with its European, largely communist, affiliates.
Toure favored a federal form of government for Francophonic West Africa. He became a leading opponent of RDA leader Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast who opposedthe federation idea. More importantly, he advocated total independence -- a stance which only Niger’s Djibo Bakary shared publicly. In 1958, de Gaulle reluctantly permitted referendums in France’s overseas territories on the issue of independence versus continuing membership in the French community.
Guinea voted overwhelmingly for independence (the only territory to rebuke de Gaulle) and Toure became president at the end of the year. France reacted harshly, swiftly withdrawing technicians and equipment, which left Guinea in a precarious economic and administrative situation. Toure then sought development aid from Eastern bloc countries. His pro-independence stance helped lead other French African countries to independence by 1960.
Toure was an outspoken critic of colonialism and an advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1978, however, he directed a major policy shift by liberalizing Guinea’s socialist-oriented economy and re-establishing diplomatic relations with France, while seeking new trade with the West. His relations with other African countries were often strained, and his international reputation suffered from his long record of imprisoning political opponents and purging suspected plotters.
In the 1982 presidential election Toure’s government claimed he had received 100% of the votes. Two years later, he died while undergoing medical treatment in the United States for a heart attack. Within weeks the military seized power in Guinea. Although he was a controversial figure, Africa acknowledges Toure’s dominant role in the independence movement.
Although his parents were poor and uneducated, Touré claimed to be the grandson of Samory, a military leader who resisted French rule at the end of the 19th century, long after many other Africans had surrendered. Reared as a Muslim, Touré attended a French technical school at Conakry, from which he was expelled after one year for leading a food riot (1936). In 1940 Touré was hired as a clerk by a business firm, the Niger Français, and the following year took an administrative assignment in the postal service. There he developed a strong interest in the labor movement and organized the first successful strike, lasting 76 days, in French West Africa. In 1945 he became secretary-general of the Post and Telecommunications Workers’ Union and helped to found the Federation of Workers’ Unions of Guinea, linked to the World Federation of Trade Unions, of which he later became vice president.
Touré became active in politics in the mid-1940s and in 1946 helped Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) form the African Democratic Rally. Touré proved to be a powerful orator and was elected to the French National Assembly in 1951 as a representative from Guinea, but he was not allowed to take his seat. Re-elected in 1954, he was again barred. After being elected mayor of Conakry by a large majority in 1955, he was finally permitted to take his place in the National Assembly the following year. By the end of 1957 Touré had become vice president of the Executive Council of Guinea.
When French President Charles de Gaulle in 1958 offered French territories a referendum on whether to join a new federal community or to become independent, Touré and the Democratic Party of Guinea–African Democratic Rally led a successful campaign for independence. Guinea’s voting population overwhelmingly rejected de Gaulle’s offer and instead chose complete independence; Guinea was the only French colony in Africa that did not accept the proposal. On October 2, 1958, Guinea became the first independent French-speaking state in Africa, and shortly afterward Touré was elected its president. The French reacted by recalling all their professional people and civil servants and by removing all transportable equipment. Threatened by an economic breakdown, Touré accepted support from the communist bloc and at the same time sought help from Western nations.
In African affairs Touré was an ardent supporter of Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah and his program for African political unity, but a union of the two nations proclaimed in 1958 never became effective. When Nkrumah was deposed in 1966, Touré granted him asylum. After an unsuccessful invasion from neighboring Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) in 1971, he undertook a political purge and imposed severe restrictions on opposition forces in his country. He was re-elected without opposition in subsequent elections and ruled with an iron hand.
Despite his harsh domestic policies, Touré was viewed in international politics as a moderate Islamic leader. In 1982 he led the delegation sent by the Islāmic Conference Organization to mediate in the Iran-Iraq War. He also was a member in the Organization for African Unity (OAU).
Ahmed Sekou Toure see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Sekou Toure see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Toure, Sekou see Toure, Ahmed Sekou
Traore, Falaba
Falaba Issa Traore (b. 1930, Bougouni, Mali – d. August 8, 2003, Rabat, Morocco) was a Malian writer, comedian, playwright, and theater and film director.
Born in Bougouni, Mali, Traore directed an amateur theater troupe before taking over direction of the regional troupe of Bamako between 1962 and 1968. From 1969 to 1973, he created and directed the Yankadi troupe for folklore and the dramatic arts.
In 1973, Traore traveled to Germany to study cinema direction. On returning to Mali in 1976, he directed the cinema division of the Ministry of Sports, Arts, and Culture.
As a comedian, Traore played notable roles in the films of Kalifa Dienta (A Banna), of Cheick Oumar Sissoko (Nidiougou Guimba), and of Boubacar Sidibe (Le pacte social, Sanoudié, and N'Tronkélé). He worked also as a director, making his first film, Juguifolo (First Gleam of Hope), in 1979, and his last, Bamunan (The Sacred Pagne) in 1990.
Falaba Issa Traore is the author -- the librettist -- of the operas Soundiata ou l'épopée mandingue and Dah Monzon ou l'épopée Bambara.
In 1972, Traore won the prix Afrique de Poesie de la Francophonie -- the African Prize for Poetry in French.
Falaba Issa Traore died in Rabat, Morocco, on August 8, 2003.
Traore, Moussa
Traore, Moussa (Moussa Traore) (b. September 25, 1936). President of Mali. Born in the Kayes region, Traore became a French army officer and studied at a French military college before returning to Mali in 1960. In November 1968, he led a group of fourteen army officers in a coup against Mali’s popular leftist president, Modibo Keita, largely in reaction to the unrestrained activities of the country’s militant youth movement, which the army considered a threat to its own power. Traore became president the following month. He immediately took measures to deal with Mali’s weak economy by encouraging private participation in industry and improving strained relations with France, a major trading partner and contributor of aid. However, the five-year drought that began in 1968 served to worsen economic conditions.
Keita’s continuing popularity throughout the country made stability elusive. A number of coup plots and attempts beginning in 1969 caused Traore to imprison his political rivals, including Captain Yoro Diakite, with whom he had shared power after the 1968 coup. Diakite died in prison in 1973. In 1974, Traore successfully promoted a referendum on a new constitution that was to take effect five years later. Keita died in detention in 1977, and his followers were largely prohibited from participating in the 1979 elections, which confirmed Traore’s rule. Student demonstrations followed and Traore’s government responded by arresting the leader of the student union, who also died in detention.
In the early 1980s, Traore made significant progress in improving Mali’s strained relations with its neighbors, with the exception of Burkina Faso, with which a long-standing boundary dispute led to border skirmishes. In 1982, Traore and Guinea’s President Sekou Toure agreed on a plan to ultimately unify the two countries. Mali’s economic problems seemed to defy resolution, and the re-emergence of draught conditions in the mid-1980s forced a heavy dependency on foreign aid for famine relief. Nevertheless, Traore appeared to have either co-opted or crushed all opposition, and in 1985 he was re-elected to a five year term with a reported 99 percent of the vote.
As a Lieutenant, Traore led the military ouster of President Modibo Keïta in 1968. Thereafter he served as Head of State (by various titles) from 1968-1979, and President of Mali from 1979 to 1991, when he was overthrown by popular protests and a military coup. He was twice condemned to death in the 1990s, but eventually pardoned on both occasions and freed in 2002. He then retired from political life.
Born in Kayes Region, he studied at Kita and at the military academy in Fréjus, France. He returned to Mali in 1960, after its 1959 independence. He became a second lieutenant in 1961, and a lieutenant in 1963. He went to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) as military instructor to its liberation movements. He then became instructor at the École militaire interarmes in Kati.
On November 19, 1968, Traore took part in the coup d'état which deposed President Modibo Keïta. He became president of the Comité militaire de libération nationale, which made him effective Head of State of the Republic of Mali. All political activity was banned. A police state was run by Captain Tiécoro Bagayoko. Informers monitored academics and teachers, mostly hostile to the military rule. The socialist economic policies of Modibo Keïta were partially dropped. In 1972-1973, a major drought hit Mali. International aid money was corruptly appropriated. In 1974, he issued a changed constitution for a Malian Second Republic, which was inaugurated in 1978, and was proported to move Mali toward civilian rule. However, the military leaders remained in power. In September 1976, a new political party was established, the Democratic Union of the Malian People (UDPM), based on the concept of non-ideological democratic centralism. Single- party presidential and legislative elections were held in June 1979, and Gen. Moussa Traore received 99% of the votes.
In 1977 ex-president Modibo Keïta died in detention, under suspicious circumstances. His funeral was well attended. The regime reacted strongly, and made violent arrests. On February 28, 1978, Moussa Traoré arrested both Tiécoro Bagayoko and Kissima Doukara, defence and security minister, on accusations of plotting a coup. In trying to move to more open politics, he appointed the historian Alpha Oumar Konaré as arts minister. In 1979, he created the UDPM (Union Démocratique du Peuple Malien), a single permitted political party; also the Union Nationale des Femmes du Mali and Union Nationale des Jeunes du Mali, compulsory organizations for women and young people. In 1980, student demonstrations were broken up, and their leader Abdoul Karim Camara ("Cabral") died from torture. In 1982, he was made commander-in-chief. Traoré was chairman of the Organization of African Unity from May 1988 to July 1989. The UDPM-controlled legislature amended the constitution in 1985 to remove limits on the length of time a president could hold office--effectively making Traoré president for life.
The political situation stabilized during 1981 and 1982, and remained generally calm throughout the 1980s. The UDPM began attracting additional members as it demonstrated that it could counter an effective voice against the excesses of local administrative authorities. Shifting its attention to Mali's economic difficulties, the government approved plans for cereal marketing liberalization, reform in the state enterprise system, new incentives to private enterprise, and an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, by 1990, there was growing dissatisfaction with the demands for austerity imposed by the IMF's economic reform programs and the perception that the president and his close associates were not themselves adhering to those demands. As in other African countries, demands for multi-party democracy increased. The Traore Government allowed some opening of the system, including the establishment of an independent press and independent political associations, but insisted that Mali was not ready for democracy.
In 1990, the National Congress for Democratic Initiative (Congrès National d’Initiative démocratique, CNID) was set up by the lawyer Mountaga Tall, and the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Alliance pour la démocratie au Mali, ADEMA) by Abdramane Baba and historian Alpha Oumar Konaré. These with the Association des élèves et étudiants du Mali (AEEM) and the Association Malienne des Droits de l'Homme (AMDH) aimed to contest Moussa Traoré's rule. Under the old constitution, all labor unions had to belong to one confederation, the National Union of Malian Workers (UNTM). When the leadership of the UNTM broke from the government in 1990, the opposition grew. In part this was a reaction to the stalling of Traoré's "Multiparisme" program, announced in October 1989 but then shelved. In part, these groups were driven by paycuts and layoffs in the government sector, and the Malian government acceding to pressure from international donors to privatize large swathes of the economy that had remained in public hands even after the overthrow of the socialist government in 1968. Students, even children, played an increasing role in Bamako's protest marches, and homes and businesses of those associated with the regime were ransacked by crowds. On March 22, 1991 a huge protest march in central Bamako was put down violently, with estimates of those killed reaching 300. Four days later a military coup deposed Traoré. The Comité de Transition pour le Salut du Peuple was set up, headed by General Amadou Toumani Touré.
In 1993, Traoré was condemned to death for "political crimes", largely focused on the killing of around 300 pro-democracy demonstrators in Bamako, but his sentence was later commuted. In 1999, he was once more condemned to death with his wife Mariam Traoré, for "economic crimes": the embezzling of the equivalent of USD $350,000 during his rule. President Alpha Oumar Konaré commuted these sentences to life imprisonment. Shortly before leaving office, on May 29, 2002, he further pardoned the couple, for the sake of national reconciliation, a stance which incoming president Amadou Toumani Touré championed.
Traoré's once reviled legacy has been somewhat softened under President Amadou Toumani, with the former dictator recognized at least informally as a former head of state and many former supporters now rallying around Chogel Maiga's Patriotic Movement for Renewal party (Mouvement Patriotique pour le Renouveau, MPR).
Moussa Traore see Traore, Moussa
Traore, Moussa (Moussa Traore) (b. September 25, 1936). President of Mali. Born in the Kayes region, Traore became a French army officer and studied at a French military college before returning to Mali in 1960. In November 1968, he led a group of fourteen army officers in a coup against Mali’s popular leftist president, Modibo Keita, largely in reaction to the unrestrained activities of the country’s militant youth movement, which the army considered a threat to its own power. Traore became president the following month. He immediately took measures to deal with Mali’s weak economy by encouraging private participation in industry and improving strained relations with France, a major trading partner and contributor of aid. However, the five-year drought that began in 1968 served to worsen economic conditions.
Keita’s continuing popularity throughout the country made stability elusive. A number of coup plots and attempts beginning in 1969 caused Traore to imprison his political rivals, including Captain Yoro Diakite, with whom he had shared power after the 1968 coup. Diakite died in prison in 1973. In 1974, Traore successfully promoted a referendum on a new constitution that was to take effect five years later. Keita died in detention in 1977, and his followers were largely prohibited from participating in the 1979 elections, which confirmed Traore’s rule. Student demonstrations followed and Traore’s government responded by arresting the leader of the student union, who also died in detention.
In the early 1980s, Traore made significant progress in improving Mali’s strained relations with its neighbors, with the exception of Burkina Faso, with which a long-standing boundary dispute led to border skirmishes. In 1982, Traore and Guinea’s President Sekou Toure agreed on a plan to ultimately unify the two countries. Mali’s economic problems seemed to defy resolution, and the re-emergence of draught conditions in the mid-1980s forced a heavy dependency on foreign aid for famine relief. Nevertheless, Traore appeared to have either co-opted or crushed all opposition, and in 1985 he was re-elected to a five year term with a reported 99 percent of the vote.
As a Lieutenant, Traore led the military ouster of President Modibo Keïta in 1968. Thereafter he served as Head of State (by various titles) from 1968-1979, and President of Mali from 1979 to 1991, when he was overthrown by popular protests and a military coup. He was twice condemned to death in the 1990s, but eventually pardoned on both occasions and freed in 2002. He then retired from political life.
Born in Kayes Region, he studied at Kita and at the military academy in Fréjus, France. He returned to Mali in 1960, after its 1959 independence. He became a second lieutenant in 1961, and a lieutenant in 1963. He went to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) as military instructor to its liberation movements. He then became instructor at the École militaire interarmes in Kati.
On November 19, 1968, Traore took part in the coup d'état which deposed President Modibo Keïta. He became president of the Comité militaire de libération nationale, which made him effective Head of State of the Republic of Mali. All political activity was banned. A police state was run by Captain Tiécoro Bagayoko. Informers monitored academics and teachers, mostly hostile to the military rule. The socialist economic policies of Modibo Keïta were partially dropped. In 1972-1973, a major drought hit Mali. International aid money was corruptly appropriated. In 1974, he issued a changed constitution for a Malian Second Republic, which was inaugurated in 1978, and was proported to move Mali toward civilian rule. However, the military leaders remained in power. In September 1976, a new political party was established, the Democratic Union of the Malian People (UDPM), based on the concept of non-ideological democratic centralism. Single- party presidential and legislative elections were held in June 1979, and Gen. Moussa Traore received 99% of the votes.
In 1977 ex-president Modibo Keïta died in detention, under suspicious circumstances. His funeral was well attended. The regime reacted strongly, and made violent arrests. On February 28, 1978, Moussa Traoré arrested both Tiécoro Bagayoko and Kissima Doukara, defence and security minister, on accusations of plotting a coup. In trying to move to more open politics, he appointed the historian Alpha Oumar Konaré as arts minister. In 1979, he created the UDPM (Union Démocratique du Peuple Malien), a single permitted political party; also the Union Nationale des Femmes du Mali and Union Nationale des Jeunes du Mali, compulsory organizations for women and young people. In 1980, student demonstrations were broken up, and their leader Abdoul Karim Camara ("Cabral") died from torture. In 1982, he was made commander-in-chief. Traoré was chairman of the Organization of African Unity from May 1988 to July 1989. The UDPM-controlled legislature amended the constitution in 1985 to remove limits on the length of time a president could hold office--effectively making Traoré president for life.
The political situation stabilized during 1981 and 1982, and remained generally calm throughout the 1980s. The UDPM began attracting additional members as it demonstrated that it could counter an effective voice against the excesses of local administrative authorities. Shifting its attention to Mali's economic difficulties, the government approved plans for cereal marketing liberalization, reform in the state enterprise system, new incentives to private enterprise, and an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, by 1990, there was growing dissatisfaction with the demands for austerity imposed by the IMF's economic reform programs and the perception that the president and his close associates were not themselves adhering to those demands. As in other African countries, demands for multi-party democracy increased. The Traore Government allowed some opening of the system, including the establishment of an independent press and independent political associations, but insisted that Mali was not ready for democracy.
In 1990, the National Congress for Democratic Initiative (Congrès National d’Initiative démocratique, CNID) was set up by the lawyer Mountaga Tall, and the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Alliance pour la démocratie au Mali, ADEMA) by Abdramane Baba and historian Alpha Oumar Konaré. These with the Association des élèves et étudiants du Mali (AEEM) and the Association Malienne des Droits de l'Homme (AMDH) aimed to contest Moussa Traoré's rule. Under the old constitution, all labor unions had to belong to one confederation, the National Union of Malian Workers (UNTM). When the leadership of the UNTM broke from the government in 1990, the opposition grew. In part this was a reaction to the stalling of Traoré's "Multiparisme" program, announced in October 1989 but then shelved. In part, these groups were driven by paycuts and layoffs in the government sector, and the Malian government acceding to pressure from international donors to privatize large swathes of the economy that had remained in public hands even after the overthrow of the socialist government in 1968. Students, even children, played an increasing role in Bamako's protest marches, and homes and businesses of those associated with the regime were ransacked by crowds. On March 22, 1991 a huge protest march in central Bamako was put down violently, with estimates of those killed reaching 300. Four days later a military coup deposed Traoré. The Comité de Transition pour le Salut du Peuple was set up, headed by General Amadou Toumani Touré.
In 1993, Traoré was condemned to death for "political crimes", largely focused on the killing of around 300 pro-democracy demonstrators in Bamako, but his sentence was later commuted. In 1999, he was once more condemned to death with his wife Mariam Traoré, for "economic crimes": the embezzling of the equivalent of USD $350,000 during his rule. President Alpha Oumar Konaré commuted these sentences to life imprisonment. Shortly before leaving office, on May 29, 2002, he further pardoned the couple, for the sake of national reconciliation, a stance which incoming president Amadou Toumani Touré championed.
Traoré's once reviled legacy has been somewhat softened under President Amadou Toumani, with the former dictator recognized at least informally as a former head of state and many former supporters now rallying around Chogel Maiga's Patriotic Movement for Renewal party (Mouvement Patriotique pour le Renouveau, MPR).
Moussa Traore see Traore, Moussa
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