what is Fulani literature?

Fula / Peul / Fulani / Fulfulde are an ethnic group living in West Africa, scattered along the Sahel belt from the Atlantic coast to the Darfur region in Sudan. Although they live in many countries, they do not constitute the majority anywhere. However, the total population is estimated at around 25 to 30 million people, which is quite a lot. The Fula belong to the Islamicate people of West Africa. Until the 18th century, they lived under the domination of another Islamicised people, the Mandinga. The situation changed after the conquest of Kansala (1867) and the destruction of the kingdom of Kaabú. In the years 1868-1888, the Fula fought a holy war against the Beafada “infidels”, conquering the territory of Djoladú, renamed Forreá. Around 1885-1890, another important turning point was the conversion imposed on the soninqués, the balantas and the felupes. The holy war declared by the Fula Almamis involved pillage and the enslavement of animist peoples.
In the 19th century, the Fula found themselves under French colonial dominion. Only in some points, such as the Portuguese Guinea centred on Bolama and Bissau, they communicated with other colonizers. Very soon, they caught the attention of the colonial scholars who noticed the presence of written tradition among the Fulas in spite of their modest material culture. Among the early Portuguese studies dedicated to this people, the monograph Fulas do Gabú stands out, in which José Mendes Moreira, wanting to be an imitator of French authors such as Delafosse, Tauxier and Arcin, brought together an attempt at “pullar” grammar, a list of photographs and several observations ethnographic studies on the living conditions and customs of the Fula. The problem of African literacy gains visibility. José Mendes Moreira attests that the Futa-fulas “have a vast written literature consisting of narratives of the heroic deeds and warlike endeavors of the conquerors of Futa-Djalom [...] in addition to translations of the Quran and political precepts. religious and social heritage inherited from the Arab and Arab-Berber” (Moreira, 1948, p. 95). In the part dedicated to material culture, Moreira observes that the Fula write “on sheets of paper or on planed boards with ink prepared by them and a wooden pen sharpened at the end which they call carã-bôl” (Moreira, 1948, p. 170 ). Later, he further clarifies that it is “marabu” paper (Moreira, 1948, p. 247), probably paper produced in West Africa according to traditional procedures of Eastern origin, without the need for import. He also reports several magical rituals related to writing: at the site of the founding of a new village, a piece of paper with a Quranic inscription is buried; to be successful in hunting, the hunter “greaves himself with a mèzina prepared with a herb called goli-goli [...] to which he also adds a piece of paper written with a verse from the Quran” (Moreira, 1948, p. 234). On the other hand, the Portuguese scholar outlines a classification of functions within the literate group that he describes as a “priestly class”: “1st – Ualio (a kind of prophet); 2nd – Karamokodjô (a type of doctor in Koranic theology); 3rd – Almúdo (simple reader of the Quran); 4th – Talibádjô (disciple, assistant)” (Moreira, 1948, pp. 234-235). Finally, Moreira speaks of “some marabou paper books, written in Arabic characters, where the origins of the tribe are narrated, the exploits of illustrious chiefs [...], the battles won [...], the wisdom of the karamokos and the fasts and virtues of the holy Muslim men” (Moreira, 1948, p. 247). However, to access the “tarika” (or "tarih" - history) of the Fulas, he employed a local informant, identified as “Mama N ́gari Djalfó, head of the Kamboré mosque” (Moreira, 1948, p. 264) who translates the text from Arabic to Creole. Only from this Creole version did Moreira write the text included in the monograph, which must therefore hide several errors and omissions. However, the text transmitted is quite curious. The Fulani's achievement, which begins with “the Turuban war” (1284 AH), is preceded by the narration of humanity's achievement since the creation of the world, covering several pre-Adamic generations, of less than a thousand years each (including the period of the primordial king Djimu). Only after a series of such periods does Baba Adaman appear. For a thousand years he lives in a paradisiacal space, until Allah makes him descend to earth in a place called Indi. His wife Auá descends, on the contrary, in Nadjidí, near Mecca. [...] 
 


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They cannot (mis)represent themselves,
​they must be (mis)represented?

Fulani world is a great mystery. I read about them in Auá, by Fausto Duarte, 1st prize in the competition for the best colonial novel held in Lisbon in 1934. The Fulani man makes in it a self-standing, independent figure, in spite of his subaltern inscription as a colonial servant. But internally, as Fausto Duarte depicts him, he is not. He is just "walking with the White" for a while.
Be that as it may, I would gladly put this novel on my shelf with colonial erotica, together with Mrs' Hull's The Sheikh and similar; (Fausto Duarte is extremely hard to find; I've read it from a copy belonging to the first edition in the National Library in Lisbon). Enough to say that it opens with an introduction mentioning a certain colonial exposition organised in Parque Eduardo VII in Lisbon, where the elegant ladies could blush (did they?) at the "priapism" of the Fulani brought for this purpose from the tiny and otherwise troublesome Portuguese colony in West Africa. The event forms a sort of less studied, yet not less interesting pendant to much more famous case of Sara Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus. It is not of common knowledge that also male bodies were exposed in somehow similar contexts, and more than a century later. Overall, Duarte's book is about passions, strong and savage passions, put in the black soul to make them burn brighter. And fill the white reader with a forbidden thrill. 

*
Gayatri Spivak would like to say something about the Fulani in her Death of the Discipline (2003: 16-18); this comes to the fore as she comments on Maryse Condé Heremakhonon, where a West African subaltern gives a list of identities that a French-speaking upper class woman from Guadeloupe knows not: Mandingo, Fulani, Toucouleur, Serer, Woloff, Toma, Guerze, Fang, Fon, Bété, Ewe, Dagbani, Yoruba, Mina, Ibo; one is surprised there is no such variety in other places; the other does not understand what she means. Neither does the majority of Spivak's American readers. So she goes to Richard Philcox for a piece of information. This is how we learn that these people should in fact be called Fulbe, and they might have originated somewhere between Mauritania and Mali, but over the centuries they migrated through the savannah of West Africa as far as the Lake Chad area. In Senegal they call themselves Haalpulaar'en, and the French ethnographers divided them into Peuls (non-Muslim pastoralists) and Toucouleurs (Muslim agriculturalists). The English travellers to Sokoto Palisades (Nigeria), as Philcox attests, caught the Hausa word for them: this is how they became Fulani in the global tongue. 
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I try to know what those Palisades in Nigeria might be. I discover an entity called The Fulani Empire of Sokoto, of which existence I have absolutely no data on my hard drive. But there is an entire book, by H.A.S. Johnston, dedicated to this topic, ready to be downloaded. Only ignores who does not wish to know.
But I return to my Spivak, who smooths my little ego, shaken by freshly discovered ignorance of an entire Empire: in the names, there is the sedimentation of the history of the movement of peoples. [...] But the implied reader of the translation is not expected to have this information. The idea of shifting demographic frontiers caught in the virtuality of the Internet and telecommunication is generally assigned to postmodern globalization. The best among the globalizers know that there may be a history there. (Spivak, 2003: 18)

There may be a history there. The old country - an undifferentiated "Africa" - exists as a backdrop for the New World African. And for Comparative Literature it does not exist at all. (Spivak, 2003: 19).
I would not agree with the statement. It does. I have read Auá in Portuguese, and a rendering of a sort of initiation song that Ruy Duarte de Carvalho translated from French and included in his poetic volume Ondula, savana branca. I've even used this material in an essay I wrote in Polish (EREGNAT EM ILLON). And I swear I will read any Fulani poem or narration as soon as I put my hands on it. For the moment, I enjoy my status of a good globalizer who knows that there may be a narration there.


Leiden, 2.05.2019