Maḥmūd Ka’ti’s name is popularly known as one of the foremost historians of the
Western Sudan, author of one of the famed historical chronicles, the Tārīkh al-fattāsh
(TF). This view is now discredited in specialist circles, with Nehemia Levtzion’s seminal
1971 article demonstrating that Ibn al-Mukhtār was the author of the 17th c. chronicle,
and recent research by Mauro Nobili and Shahid Mathee showing that the 1913 edited
version and translation is composed of two distinct textual entities, the chronicle by Ibn
al-Mukhtār and a 19th c. pseudo-epigraphic work written by Nūḥ b. al-Ṭāhir, and
apocryphally ascribed to Maḥmūd Ka‘ti.1 Despite this evidence however, Maḥmūd Ka’ti
continues to be regarded as a local historian, and his name continues to be associated
with the chronicle, substantiated by the recent translation of the TF into English by nonspecialists,
to give just one example.2
Even in specialist circles, one particularly striking notion that endures is the idea of
Maḥmūd Ka’ti as a writer of historical notes, which contributed to his descendant
authoring the TF. This paper tackles this conception of the ‘historical note’ in relation to
the purported marginalia of Maḥmūd Ka’ti found in the Fondo Kati’s manuscripts. This
library, named after our personage, claims to be the collection of manuscripts begun by
Maḥmūd Ka‘ti and his Andalusí father, and augmented and preserved by their
descendants up to the present. The paper analyses some of Maḥmūd Ka‘ti’s marginalia
in this collection and determines its central aims: firstly, to establish the chronology of
his life, with the particular purpose of placing him in the entourage of Askiya
Muḥammad. Secondly, to affirm Maḥmūd Ka’ti’s scholarly credentials and finally and
most crucially, to establish him as a writer of historical notes, which would later be used
by others in the family to write the TF. The paper further shows the usefulness of the
idea of the ‘historical note,’ arguing that even in the face of scant evidence, it continues
to contribute to the making of Maḥmūd Ka‘ti as “the first historian of the Sudan,” as he is
sometimes called.
1 Nehemia Levtzion, “A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle by Ibn al-Mukhtār: A Critical Study of Ta’rı̄kh alfattāsh,”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 34–3 (1971): 571–593; Mauro Nobili and
Mohamed Shahid Mathee, “Towards a New Study of the So-Called Tārīkh al-fattāsh,” History in Africa 42
(2015): 37-73.
2 Christopher Wise and Hala Abu Taleb (trans.), Ta’rīkh al fattāsh: The Timbuktu Chronicles, 1493– 1599
(Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 2011).