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Blood Partnership in Theory and Practice: the Expansion of Muslim Power in Dar Al-Kuti*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Dennis D. Cordell
Dennis D. Cordell
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University
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Extract

This article examines the institution of blood partnership, first theoretically, and then with reference to northern Equatorial Africa and Dar al-Kuti, a Muslim slave-raiding and slave-trading state. Contemporary anthropologists described blood partnership schematically as the exchange of blood and of conditional curses between two individuals or groups for the purpose of guaranteeing co-operation. They also suggested that blood partnership created bonds analogous to kinship. Blood alliances were concluded almost exclusively between parties who were not related genealogically, and promoted security, co-operation and long-distance trade. They were particularly important among societies outside highly centralized states, where they provided the ideology and mechanism for wider action embracing unrelated groups. Northern Equatorial Africa was just such an area, and, in the nineteenth century at least, blood pacts were very common. The article looks at blood partnership in the region generally, pointing out how foreigners, Muslims as well as Europeans, adopted the institution as a means of allying themselves with local leaders. Muslim penetration of the region is examined, and the infiltration of the zariba system of the southwestern Sudan into Ubangi-Shari (in what is now the Central African Empire) is outlined. The second half of the article deals specifically with Dar al-Kuti. Oral testimony and written evidence are combined to present a picture of blood partnership among the Banda, the most important non-Muslim people included in the state. The analysis is then extended to show how Muslims in the region, mainly the Runga from the Chad basin, led by Kobur and then by al-Sanusi, used blood pacts to foster their political and economic ambitions among non-Muslim peoples south of the Islamic frontier.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1979 , pp. 379 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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40 Several scholars of Equatorial and East Africa have suggested that the need for blood pacts decreased with increasing centralization and routinization of political power. Thus bilateral arrangements for personal security and incorporation became less necessary. The creation of colonial administrations may also have adversely affected blood partnership. See Dampierre, de, Un ancien royaume Bandia 264Google Scholar; Tegnaeus, , La Fraternité de sang, 116Google Scholar; Evans-Pritchard, , ‘Azande blood-brotherhood’, 374, 394–5Google Scholar; Beattie, J., ‘The blood pact of Bunyoro’, African Studies, xvii (1958), 203.Google Scholar

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54 OA3.2; OA4.1; OA9.1; OA9.2/10.1; OA15.2/16.1.

55 OA2.1, Boukar Froumbala, Bornoan (Kanuri), Ndele, , 11 May 1974Google Scholar; OA7.2/8.1; OA14.1, Othman, Abdel-Banat, Dajo, Village of Koundi, 20 June 1974.Google Scholar

56 OA14.2.

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59 OA5.2/6.1; OA11.2/12.1; OA14.2; OA 19.1/20.1; OA21.1; OA22.1; Julien, , ‘Mohamedes-Senoussi et ses états’ (1925) 154Google Scholar; Toque, , Essai sur le peuple et la langue Banda, 12–15.Google Scholar

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64 OA15.1.

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66 OA9.2/10.1. On the breaking of blood partnership in general, see Evans-Pritchard, , ‘Azande blood-brotherhood’ 374Google Scholar; Tegnaeus, , La Fraternité de sang, 51Google Scholar. For examples in Ubangi-Shari, see Dybowski, Jean, La Route du Tchad, du Loango au Chari (Paris, 1893), 163Google Scholar; Julien, , ‘Du Haut-Oubangui vers le Chari’, 177, 342, 360Google Scholar. F. Lukyn Williams noted that in Ankole, as in Dar al-Kuti and elsewhere in Equatorial Africa, blood pacts theoretically lasted forever; but the memory of such ties is lost after two or three generations since they represent personal bonds not integrated into the lineage structure whose past is more carefully preserved. See ‘Blood-brotherhood in Ankole’, Uganda Journal, ii, i (1934), 34.Google Scholar