The
Niger River (pronounced
/'na?d??r/ NYE-j?r) is the principal
river of western
Africa, extending about 4,180&_160;km (2,600&_160;mi). Its
drainage basin is 2,117,700&_160;
km2 (817,600&_160;
sq&_160;mi) in area.
[1] Its source is in the
Guinea Highlands in southeastern
Guinea. It runs in a crescent through
Mali,
Niger, on the border with
Benin and then through
Nigeria, discharging through a massive
delta, known as the
Niger Delta of the
Oil Rivers, into the
Gulf of Guinea in the
Atlantic Ocean. The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa, exceeded only by the
Nile and the
Congo River (also known as the Zaïre River). Its main
tributary is the
Benue River.
Different African languages have a variety of names for the river. The Niger is still called Jeliba or Joliba "great river" in Manding, Isa Ber "big river" in Songhay, and Oya, a Yoruba River Niger goddess. A good possibility for a source of "Niger" remains the Tuareg phrase gher n gheren "river of rivers", shortened to ngher, a local name used along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu. As Tuareg is a Berber language which traveled from the Mediterranean basin with the Tuareg in the 10th century, it provides a linguistic link between the two regions.
Some Medieval and late Classical European maps used the name "Niger" applied only to the middle reaches of the river, in modern Mali, while Quorra or Kworra was used for the lower reaches in modern Nigeria. The name Niger was extended to cover the entire river on maps once Europeans realized that these were one and the same. One possibility is the Tuareg phrase was shortened to ngher, from the middle of the river near Timbuktu. It is worth mentioning that the Tabula Peutingeriana records a Flumen Girin ("River Girin") with the remark Hoc flumen quidam Grin vocant, alii Nilum appellant; dicitur enim sub terra Etyopium in Nylum ire Lacum,[2] "This river which some are naming Grin is called Nile by others, for it is said to flow under the ground of Ethiopia [i.e. Africa] into the Nile Lake".
When European colonial powers began to send ships along the West coast of Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Senegal River was often postulated to be part of the Niger. The Niger Delta, pouring into the Atlantic through mangrove swamps and thousands of tributaries along more than a hundred miles, was incorrectly identified by Europeans as coastal wetlands. It was only with the 18th century visits of Mungo Park, who travelled down the Niger River and visited the great Sahelian empires of his day, that Europeans correctly identified the course of the Niger. The name, even when Park and others reported its name correctly from local guides, persisted in the West as Niger.
