Fuuta Tooro Research Articles

Morphophono-Logics of Interrogatives in Fulfulde Noun Classes

Fulfulde language is classified under African languages, as a family member of Niger-Congo, under West Atlantic group. It has some family members such as Wolof, Serer, and Joola. (Greenberg 1963). It has six dialects across West Africa, which are: Fuuta Tooro, Fuuta Jaaloo, Masina, Sokoto and Western Niger, Central Northern Nigeria and Eastern Northern Nigeria, and Adamawa (Arnott 1972 p. 8). In Fulfulde language, nominal stems must be accompanied by a nominal class suffix (McIntosh 1984 p. 43) and agreement in noun affects both words and sentences in the language (Ahmed 2011 p. 27). The noun classes peculiar to Adamawa dialect of Fulfulde attach an interrogative –yee suffix to form an interrogative word. In order to answer the questions formed by attaching the –yee suffix, a modification of -yee to -yaa occurs in the process. The formations and the answers of the interrogatives follow some logical ordering from simplex to complex, which are discussed in this paper, and supported with examples. This paper is a descriptive linguistics research with a native intuition of the researcher, whom is a native to the Adamawa dialect, as a primary source of data. In conclusion, the paper found out that in Fulfulde dialect of Adamawa, all the noun classes form an interrogative word by adding -yee affix, and form an answer through ablaut of -yee to –yaa morphemes. Phonological processes such as assimilation, deletion and metathesis occur in the formation of the interrogatives.

‘Orienting’ Fulani herders of Mauritania: Struggles for Identity, Political Marginalization and Mobilization Since the 1950s Islamization

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 35, 3, 2010 © The Maghreb Review 2010 This publication is printed on longlife paper ‘ORIENTING’ FULANI HERDERS OF MAURITANIA: STRUGGLES FOR IDENTITY, POLITICAL MARGINALIZATION AND MOBILIZATION SINCE THE 1950S ISLAMIZATION BY RICCARDO CIAVOLELLA* INTRODUCTION This article offers a diachronic analysis of the political condition of pastoral Fulani (or Fulbe) with nomadic origins in Mauritania, such as the Fulaabe lineage and Fulbe jeeri and Fulbe waalo groups. Despite their relatively small demographic importance, their history reveals critical political and cultural dynamics at the core of the country’s evolution. Particularly, it highlights the limits of polarized discourses of identity between Arab/African and nomadic/sedentary categories. The issue is relevant to the political and public debate in Mauritania since the 1990s, when a handful of intellectuals lobbied for the recognition of an arab origin for Fulbe (Sall, 1999). The aim of this strategy was the acquisition of power and it raised a long debate within the Negro-Mauritanian political movement and, on the opposite side, among the supporters of the Arab identity of the country close to governing elites. ‘ORIENTING’ FULANI HERDERS OF MAURITANIA 307 But that debate focuses exclusively on the trajectory of a few individuals aiming for a political career. It neglects the history from below of all the Fulani communities of nomadic and pastoral origin. Their history inside the Mauritanian state since its colonial foundation is marked by an increased marginalization. This process of exclusion came to a climax with the ethnic persecutions of 1989. Fulani herders also occupy a difficult position in the Mauritanian political arena compared with the sedentary Negro-Mauritanian elite, which disposes of better power networks and economic assets. Stemming from an analysis of the debate about their place in the cultural and socio-political context of Mauritania, this article retraces the historical foundations of the Fulani herders’ political and social conditions. In particular, it analyses how some intellectuals tried to mobilize Fulani marginality as a strategic discourse for claiming social and political integration and also discusses the place of Fulani marginal communities in the context of highly ethnically polarized political strife. Fulbe or Haalpulaar’en: Conflicting Stories in the Margins of a Long History In Mauritania, there are some issues which constantly recur in conversations in taxis, courtyards, rural villages, taxis-brousse, political parties’ headquarters and intellectual debates. One of these is about the existence of a cultural, racial or ethnic difference between Fulbe and Haalpulaar’en. Self-defining Haalpulaar’en usually consider that both ethnic names refer to the same group, as ‘Haalpulaar’en’ literally means ‘those who speak the pulaar’ or language of the Fulbe (Wane, 1969). The shared language is then the criterion for defining a unique ethno-cultural identity. The term ‘Fulbe’ has a particular meaning only when evoking their pastoralist and nomadic ancestors before Haalpulaar’en historical sedentarization in the 16th century, or when describing the specific noble group (rimbe) of herders inside the Haalpulaar’en status hierarchy. Nevertheless, some self-defining Fulbe reject these linguistic and social criteria of ethnic unification with Haalpulaar’en. They rather define their particular identity as related to their historical or current pastoral and nomadic way of life. They claim a cultural specificity in opposition to the sedentary and farming society of the Haalpulaar’en, whom they call ‘Fuutankoobe’, or the inhabitants of the Fuuta Tooro historical region. The issue reminds us of the long anthropological debate about Fulbe identity. Colonial administrators and ethnographers, such as Delafosse and Faidherbe (Pondopoulo, 1996, 2009), usually opted for a differentiation between ‘Peuls’ (Fulbe) and ‘Toucouleurs’ (Haalpulaar’en), based on racial and cultural criteria: ‘real’ Fulbe had to be of fair complexion, representing an intermediate race between “Sub-Saharan African Negros” and “white Arabs” of the North (Boëtsch and Ferrié, 1999), and following a pastoral and nomadic way of life, like any other supposedly Hamitic ethnic group with Eastern origins. Combining cultural and racial categories, the colonial ‘anthropological reason’ 308 RICCARDO CIAVOLELLA (Amselle, 1990) draws a clear distinction between Fulani nomads and sedentary people, based on a set of opposite ethnic characteristics. This has profoundly contributed to the creation of the myth of pure nomadic and pastoral Fulani, opposed to political...

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro, an Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Pulaar and Translated into English

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro, an Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Pulaar and Translated into English

Un historien et anthropologue sénégalais : Shaikh Musa Kamara.

D. Robinson — A Senegalese Historian and Anthropologist : Shaikh Musa Kamara. The author draws the historical background and the geographical setting of Shaikh Musa Kamara's life and regrets that, notwithstanding his being a prolific historian of the Fuuta Tooro, he be so unrecognized. Robinson recounts his life and divides it in three large periods: the thirty initial years, with a studious youth and three marking influences; the time at the beginning of the colonial period, which is not very well known; and the twenty-five last years when he took up writing. The article presents Kamara's works, their characteristics and topics. A complete list of his manuscripts and a detailed table of contents of his materpiece, the Zuhur, are appended.

KANE, Moustapha, and ROBINSON, David, The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro, An anthology of Oral Tradition transcribed in Pulaar and translated into English, African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1984, 177 pp., one map, US$14.95

KANE, Moustapha, and ROBINSON, David, The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro, An anthology of Oral Tradition transcribed in Pulaar and translated into English, African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1984, 177 pp., one map, US$14.95

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: An Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Puular and Translated into English

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: An Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Puular and Translated into English

Umar's Jihād - The Holy War of Umar Tal: the Western Sudan in the mid-Nineteenth Century. By David Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Pp. xv + 434. £32.50. - The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: an Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Pulaar and Translated into English. By Moustapha Kane and David Robinson, with David Dwyer and Sonja Fagerberg. East

Umar's Jihād - The Holy War of Umar Tal: the Western Sudan in the mid-Nineteenth Century. By David Robinson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Pp. xv + 434. £32.50. - The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: an Anthology of Oral Tradition Transcribed in Pulaar and Translated into English. By Moustapha Kane and David Robinson, with David Dwyer and Sonja Fagerberg. East

L'État géomètre : les leydi des Peul du Fuuta Tooro (Sénégal) et du Maasina (Mali).

J. Schmitz-—The State as Surveyor: The Fulani's leydi in Fuuta Tooro (Senegal) and Maasina (Mali). The Haalpulaar in the Senegal valley and the Fulani in the Niger inland delta use the same word, leydi, for their minimal territorial unit. The two groups have gone through often parallels destinies, especially on the advent of Moslem States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, while the Haalpulaar built an integrated society where ethnie references were superseded by status distinctions, in Maasina the various population strata kept their autonomy. Hence the territorial organization in the latter zone bears the mark of pastoral hegemony, while in Fuuta Tooro husbandsmen's and fishermen's territories are coterminal since neither did succeed in enforcing an exclusive network; likewise every freemen's group is represented at the level of the micro-State which governs the leydi. One may wonder why no account of such fonction al realities is taken in the preliminary studies of hydraulic and agricultural developments in Senegal.

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: an anthology of oral tradition transcribed in Pulaar and translated into English

The Islamic Regime of Fuuta Tooro: an anthology of oral tradition transcribed in Pulaar and translated into English

Shaikh Amadu Ba and Jihad in Jolof

Shaikh Amadu Ba1 was a Muslim cleric from the Fuuta Tooro in Senegal. In early 1869 he began preaching a message of return to pure Islam and adherence to the Tijaniyya2 in the Fuuta and in neighboring Wolof states, and soon had attracted a large Tukolor and Wolof following.3 When he inaugurated the militant phase of his jihad later in that year, however, he met with resistance from various Senegambian rulers and from the French in Saint Louis.4 In 1870 Amadu gained a territorial base for his movement by conquering the Wolof kingdom of Jolof and remained there until 1875, when he was defeated and killed by a coalition of Senegambian rulers who feared the success his movement had attained.