2,030 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Newbie

The invention of the \”Shu – mom\” writing system by King Ibrahim Njoya (1860 – 1933) in which he wrote and taught the culture of the Bamun people remains a landmark in the history of cultural development and which is still preserved till our time. Held as truly great in his own time and even today it is particularly because he knew and profoundly understood his people; his spirit was part of theirs, and he was thus able to inspire them and analyse their creative genuis in a wide range of fields to pacifiy this spirit as well as to build a kingdom which was first of all mystical before being impressionably physical and artistic.Only 19 when he assumed the throne, he was a King of the Bamun for over 40 years, was a visionary genius who wanted to have an independent system of writing that was not connected to the Arabic script or the Roman script, in order to create a secret court language. It is said that he was inspired by a dream, in which he was directed to draw a man\’s hand on a board and then to wash off his drawing and drink the water. He then asked some of his most knowledgeable subjects to draw different objects and name them.When he got the results, he experimented until he had completed a writing system comprising 466 pictographic and ideographic symbols. Afterwards, he then established a series of schools, referred to as \”Book Houses\”, throughout the Bamun Kingdom at which hundreds of his subjects learned to read and write. Court Officals made collections of literature, volumes of history, customs and traditions, a book of rules of conduct for the court, a pharmcopeia, and a collection of maps of the Kingdom.Njoya then created a library and ethnographic collection at his palace and encouraged the development of traditional weaving and dyeing under his patronage. An original intellect and a brilliant scholar, was Njoya was one of the most creative minds of Afrika in the 19th and 20th centuries. No matter how many times our ancestors tried to build something, they were always interrupted by the fear of the colonisers.The French despised the creations of Njoya, and in an attempt to destroy his schools and achievements desposed him in 1931 and exiled him to Yaounde, where he passed away in 1933. Nevertheless, he had become an icon in the history of Afrika. The Shumom script what was then known is to now teach the rising generations on the knowledge and wisdom of their fathers so that the future shall be better than the past.