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Oral Sources and Social Differentiation in the Jaara Kingdom from the Sixteenth Century: A Methodological Approach*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
The dawn of the history of the kingdom of Jaara, during the era of the Jawara dynasty (from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century) is shaped by the story of Daaman Gille and his companions, the most important of whom is Jonpisugo. The lives of these two characters—linked up until their death at Banbagede, where their tombs are only a few hundred meters apart—were the subject of a rich oral literature, all the more noteworthy given the rarity of written documents.
In my earlier work (Diawara 1985, 1989, 1990) I discussed the typology of narratives and the specific role of women servants as historians of their social group. The oral sources include family traditions from all social classes, except for recently acquired slaves; the recitals of professional narrators who were by heredity in the service of protector families whose history they proclaimed to the public; the narratives of servants, including the tanbasire, a collection of women's songs from among the royal servants, or the accounts of people who, with their ancestors, had long been slaves (cf. Diawara 1990).
Historical chance brings together Daama and Jonpisugo, but their respective social standing differentiates them; just as “friendship” brings together the master and the servant, so the struggle for power leads to the birth of differences in the conception of “the things of the past” among their descendants. How is the past constructed and lived differently by their respective progeny or supposed descendants? What poetic license accrues to the offspring of he who was only a servant, even if he was a royal servant? The response to this question explains the dynamic of a particular servants' oral documentation.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © African Studies Association 1995
Footnotes
*
This title derives from a discussion with Peter Mark. I wish to thank Odile Goerg, Hélène d'Almeida–Topor, and Denise Paulme, as well as David Conrad and Adam Jones, who were kind enough to read, correct, and discuss an early version of this paper. I thank Peter Mark for the translation. The original draft was composed while I was at the University of Bayreuth as a visiting professor of SFB 214 and the Afrika-Institut. I express my profound gratitude to both institutions. A short version of this text was presented to the colloquium called “‘Echanges Franco-Allemands sur l'Afrique’ Passau, December 1991.”
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