THE MEDIUM OF “TRADITION”: AMADOU HAMPÂTÉ BÂ’S CONFRONTATIONS WITH LANGUAGES, LITERACY, AND COLONIALISM

• Published in: Islamic Africa Vol. 1; no. 2; pp. 217 - 228
• Main Author: Austen, Ralph A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Netherlands Brill 01-12-2010; Northwestern University Press; Brill Academic Publishers, Inc
• Subjects: African culture; African history; African literature; Alphabets; Bâ, Amadou Hampaté; French literature; Islam; Linguistics; Literature-Africa; Muslims; Oral history; Oral literature; Oral tradition; Orthographies; Poetry; Religion; Religious literature; Writing; Written communication
• ISSN: 0803-0685; 2333-262X; 2154-0993
• DOI: 10.1163/21540993-90000017

In his efforts to communicate his research on African “tradition”—more specifically oral texts—Hampâté Bâ was faced with a choice of languages and alphabets. Much of his work appeared only in French, the language of his main formal education and administrative training. In collaboration with several French colonial scholar-administrators (Henri Gaden, Colonel R. Figaret, and Gilbert Vieillard) Hampâté Bâ eventually developed a system for writing his native Fulfulde in Roman characters. However for his own Fulfulde religious poetry (“mes seules oeuvres de ‘creation’”), Hampâté Bâ used Ajami (Arabic letters representing non-Arabic languages), a writing system that he also promoted as a medium of wider Fulbe literacy.