Fulani word of the day

Ɓeynguure [Pular] (noun): family

“By the end of the nineteenth century, states established by the Fulbe Muslim scholars had, on an unprecedented scale, promoted Islamic institutions, including Qur’anic and higher Islamic studies schools and Sufi lodges. Just like other groups, some Fulbe clerical families also became assimilated to other ethnic groups. In Senegambia, for…

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“From Senegambia to Mali—including in the Islamic theocracy in Futa Djallon,84 in Futa Toro,85 and among the Dina in Masina—the Fulbe also contributed decisively to state building in nineteenth-century western Bilad al-Sudan.86 Particularly remarkable among them was Umar Tall.87 Initiated into the Tijaniyya in his homeland of northern Senegal,…

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“Beverly Mack and Jean Boyd have documented the role played by women in the intellectual and political life of the Sokoto Caliphate. Uthman Dan Fodio himself belonged to a clan in which women received religious instruction. His mother and grandmother were learned scholars,77 and his daughter Nana Asma’u78 (d. 1864) wrote nine poems in Arabic,…

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