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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:From Pastoralist to Politician: The Problem of a Fulbe 'Aristocracy'
Authors:Burnham, PhilipISNI
Last, MurrayISNI
Year:1994
Periodical:Cahiers d'études africaines
Volume:34
Issue:133-135
Pages:313-357
Language:English
Geographic terms:Nigeria
Northern Nigeria
Subjects:social structure
Fulani
Sokoto polity
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1994.2055
Abstract:Over a period of a hundred years, the leaders of the Fulbe groups who participated in the jihad of 1804-1808 found themselves exchanging pastoralism for the life of a political administrator and military campaigner. The political stratum of the new emirates which arose in West Africa is often called the Fulbe 'aristocracy'. Using the definition of Max Weber, the present authors argue that it is neither accurate nor particularly useful to label all officeholders in the Sokoto Caliphate (present-day Nigeria) as 'aristocrats', nor is it useful to conceive of political power in the States of the Caliphate as emerging out of a preexisting aristocratic stratum within Fulbe society. They analyse the different patterns of political officeholding that obtained within the States of the Caliphate in relation to the modes of stratification and social composition of the predominantly Fulbe groups which created these political formations. They find that many officeholders were recruited from the 'haabe', conquered non-Muslim and non-Fulbe peoples, who were unfree and subordinate. Furthermore, the development of an 'aristocratic' culture went against the key rituals of Islam in which the equality of all believers is made explicit. This Islamic precept was backed up by the egalitairan ethos the Fulbe retained as pastoralists, an ethos in which age, not birth, gave status. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in French (p. 525).
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