"Cooley...employed his knowledge of Arabic to elucidate the geography of interior West Africa on the basis of extant sources which had hitherto never been properly analyzed." -Compassing the Vaste Globe of the Earth (2019)
"The honor of establishing the modern historiography of West Africa belongs to William Desborough Cooley (1795-1883) whose Negroland of the Arabs appeared in 1841." Encyclopedia of African History (2013)
The Negroland of the Arabs...was the first reliable account of the historical geography of sub-Saharan Africa and represented the dawn of a new discipline, that of West African history." -The Storied City: The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past (2018)
"The Negroland of the Arabs...was in many ways a masterpiece of critical geography...was received as a great achievement." - Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science (2011)
The object of the elaborate little 1841 book "The Negroland of the Arabs" written by William Desborough Cooley is clearly put forth in the title-page. It is an endeavour to establish the early geography of Central Africa, by a careful reference to and explanation of the descriptions of Negroland transmitted to us by Arab geographers—the writings of Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Batutah furnishing the author with the greatest portion of his materials.
In this book at last a proper respect paid to the researches of Arabian scholars, which is justly due to them, not only for the value of their labours, but for being the ardent cultivators of the sciences at a period when such studies were almost entirely neglected throughout Europe. By means of these authorities, Mr. Cooley has been enabled to correct a great number of mistakes that his predecessors in the same field of inquiry had fallen into, and to ascertain many unknown facts which cannot but be considered valuable additions to geographical science.
About the author:
William Desborough Cooley (1795–1883) was an Irish geographer. Discoveries by European explorers gradually showed that a number of his theories about Central Africa, though strongly held, were incorrect. In other controversies his position is now considered to have had some justification. His major contributions are now seen as relating to source criticism of historical records, the understanding of West Africa, and as a perceptive historian of globalisation. Cooley held and defended strong views on the geography of Central Africa.
Other works by Cooley:
The World surveyed in the XIX Century
Sir Francis Drake, his Voyage, 1595
Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile
The Memoir on the Lake Regions of East Africa reviewed, London 1864.
Dr. Livingstone and the Royal Geographical Society, London 1874.
Physical Geography, or the Terraqueous Globe and its Phenomena, London 1876.
