Ouallam is a town around 90 km north of Niamey in southwestern Niger . It is the capital of Ouallam Department , one of four departments in the Tillabéri Region .
53-631: In 2013 it had a population of 68,191. Historically centered in the lands of the Djerma people , Ouallam has important minorities of rural and urban Tuareg and Fula peoples . It is the main town of the rocky Sahel highlands called the Zarmaganda plateau , and is one of the traditional homes of the Djerma people and one of the places in which they coalesced as an ethnicity in the 15th and 16th centuries. The area had been along an important trade route to
106-525: A Core group in which Berta was considered divergent, and coordinating Fur–Maban as a sister clade to Chari–Nile. Songhay Saharan Kunama–Ilit Kuliak Fur Maban Moru–Mangbetu Sara–Bongo Berta Surmic – Nilotic Nubian , Nara , Taman Gumuz Koman (including Shabo) Kadugli–Krongo Bender revised his model of Nilo-Saharan again in 1996, at which point he split Koman and Gumuz into completely separate branches of Core Nilo-Saharan. Christopher Ehret came up with
159-419: A classification which expanded upon and revised that of Greenberg. He considered Fur and Maban to constitute a Fur–Maban branch, added Kadu to Nilo-Saharan, removed Kuliak from Eastern Sudanic, removed Gumuz from Koman (but left it as a sister node), and chose to posit Kunama as an independent branch of the family. By 1991 he had added more detail to the tree, dividing Chari–Nile into nested clades, including
212-491: A compound may have several separate huts, each hut with the different wives of the head male. The huts are traditionally roundhouses, or circular shaped structures made of mud walls with a thatched straw conical roof. The Zarma people grow maize , millet , sorghum , rice , tobacco, cotton and peanuts during the rainy season (June to November). They have traditionally owned herds of animals, which they rent out to others till they are ready to be sold for meat. Some own horses,
265-652: A large region. According to Anne Haour – a professor of African Studies, some scholars consider the historic caste-like social stratification in Zarma-Songhai people to be a pre-Islam feature while some consider it derived from the Arab influence. Caste-based servitude The traditional form of caste-based servitude was still practiced by the Tuareg , Zarma and Arab ethnic minorities. —Country Report: Niger (2008) US State Department The different strata of
318-694: A legacy of those Zerma people who historically belonged to the warrior class and were skilled cavalrymen in Islamic armies. Living along the River Niger, some Zarma people rely on fishing. The property inheritance and occupational descent is patrilineal. Many Zarma people, like Songhai, have migrated into coastal and prospering cities of West Africa, especially Ghana. Zarma people also grow guavas, mangoes, bananas, and citrus fruits. The Zarma people, like their neighboring ethnic groups in West Africa, have
371-569: A means to escape French economic exploitation. Of the various ethnic groups in Niger, the early cooperation of the Zarma elite with the colonizers led to a legacy where Zarma interests have been promoted, and they have continued to compose an important part of the Nigerien political elite after independence in 1960. The language, society and culture of the Zarma people is barely distinguishable from
424-482: A novel classification of Nilo-Saharan as a preliminary part of his then-ongoing research into the macrofamily. His evidence for the classification was not fully published until much later (see Ehret 2001 below), and so it did not attain the same level of acclaim as competing proposals, namely those of Bender and Blench. By 2000 Bender had entirely abandoned the Chari–Nile and Komuz branches. He also added Kunama back to
477-425: A number of languages with at least a million speakers (most data from SIL's Ethnologue 16 (2009)). In descending order: Some other important Nilo-Saharan languages under 1 million speakers: The total for all speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages according to Ethnologue 16 is 38–39 million people. However, the data spans a range from ca. 1980 to 2005, with a weighted median at ca. 1990. Given population growth rates,
530-635: A proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia , north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in
583-466: A relationship between the branches of Nilo-Saharan, though he leaves open the possibility that some of them may prove to be related to each other once the necessary reconstructive work is done. According to Güldemann (2018), "the current state of research is not sufficient to prove the Nilo-Saharan hypothesis." The constituent families of Nilo-Saharan are quite diverse. One characteristic feature
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#1732798789806636-411: A rich tradition of music, group dance known as Bitti Harey and singing. The common musical instruments that accompany these arts include gumbe (big drum), dondon (talking drums), molo or kuntigui (string instruments), goge (violin-like instrument). Some of this music also accompanies with folley , or spirit possession-related rituals. Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are
689-440: A servile status, these colonial era estimates for "slaves" may exaggerate because there is a difference between servile status and true slavery. Slaves were an economic asset used for farming, herding and domestic work. A system of social stratification developed even among the slaves, and this status system survived even after slavery was officially abolished during French colonial rule. The French came to regions inhabited by
742-443: A whole, however this relationship is more likely due to a close relationship between Songhay and Mande many thousands of years ago in the early days of Nilo-Saharan, so the relationship is probably more one of ancient contact than a genetic link. The extinct Meroitic language of ancient Kush has been accepted by linguists such as Rille, Dimmendaal, and Blench as Nilo-Saharan, though others argue for an Afroasiatic affiliation. It
795-725: A wider family came in 1912, when Diedrich Westermann included three of the (still independent) Central Sudanic families within Nilotic in a proposal he called Niloto-Sudanic ; this expanded Nilotic was in turn linked to Nubian, Kunama, and possibly Berta, essentially Greenberg's Macro-Sudanic ( Chari–Nile ) proposal of 1954. In 1920 G. W. Murray fleshed out the Eastern Sudanic languages when he grouped Nilotic, Nubian, Nera , Gaam , and Kunama. Carlo Conti Rossini made similar proposals in 1926, and in 1935 Westermann added Murle . In 1940 A. N. Tucker published evidence linking five of
848-469: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Djerma people The Zarma people are an ethnic group predominantly found in westernmost Niger . They are also found in significant numbers in the adjacent areas of Nigeria and Benin , along with smaller numbers in Burkina Faso , Ivory Coast , Ghana , Togo , and Sudan . In Niger, the Zarma are often considered by outsiders to be of
901-507: Is a challenging proposal to demonstrate but contend that it looks more promising the more work is done. Some of the constituent groups of Nilo-Saharan are estimated to predate the African neolithic . For example, the unity of Eastern Sudanic is estimated to date to at least the 5th millennium BC. Nilo-Saharan genetic unity would thus be much older still and date to the late Upper Paleolithic . The earliest written language associated with
954-441: Is a part of the Zarma people tradition, with preferred partners being cross cousins, and a system of ritualistic acceptance between co-wives. This endogamy is similar to other ethnic groups in West Africa. The women among Zarma people, like other ethnic groups of Sahel and West Africa, have traditionally practiced female genital mutilation (FGM). However, the prevalence rates have been lower and falling. According to UNICEF and
1007-405: Is a tripartite singulative–collective–plurative number system , which Blench (2010) believes is a result of a noun-classifier system in the protolanguage . The distribution of the families may reflect ancient watercourses in a green Sahara during the African humid period before the 4.2-kiloyear event , when the desert was more habitable than it is today. Within the Nilo-Saharan languages are
1060-590: Is also home to an agricultural research center of the INRAN ( Institut National de Recherches Agronomiques du Niger —the National Institute of Agricultural Research, Niger.) In late 2008, the nearby village of Siwili was the scene of intercommunal violence, purportedly over accusations of theft of domestic animals. 14°19′03″N 2°05′54″E / 14.317615°N 2.098389°E / 14.317615; 2.098389 This Niger location article
1113-688: Is poorly attested. There is little doubt that the constituent families of Nilo-Saharan—of which only Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic show much internal diversity—are valid groups. However, there have been several conflicting classifications in grouping them together. Each of the proposed higher-order groups has been rejected by other researchers: Greenberg's Chari–Nile by Bender and Blench, and Bender's Core Nilo-Saharan by Dimmendaal and Blench. What remains are eight (Dimmendaal) to twelve (Bender) constituent families of no consensus arrangement. Joseph Greenberg , in The Languages of Africa , set up
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#17327987898061166-525: The Aïr Mountains , used by the Songhay Empire , and was later controlled by a series of Tuareg confederations. Ouallam, on a main road to Niamey , is situated in an agricultural region which, although drier than areas further south and west, is a center for livestock (cattle—both sedentary and semi-nomadic, goats), as well as grain agriculture (millet and sorghum). A market center, the town
1219-491: The Fulani people or Tuareg people for tending. The Zarma people have had a history of slave and caste systems, like many West African ethnic groups. Like them, they also have had a historical musical tradition. The Zarma people are alternatively referred to as Zerma , Zaberma , Zabarma Zabermawa , Djerma , Dyerma , Jerma , or other terms. Zarma is the term used by the Zarma people themselves. The estimates for
1272-473: The Niger Bend region of Mali . Some describe the Zarma as originally Mande or Soninke . Historian Dierk Lange has argued that these legends are accurate, pointing to Mande words in the Zarma language. Other scholars, however, believe them to have been part of the broader Songhai ethnic umbrella since the beginning. The Zarma migrated south-eastward into their current geographic concentration during
1325-465: The Songhai Empire period, settling particularly in what is now southwest Niger near the capital Niamey . According to legend, this migration was led by Mali Bero , who migrated by flying on a magical millet silo bottom. He decided to migrate with his people following a fight between the Zarma and a neighboring Tuareg village. Using this oral tradition as evidence, Lange has argued that
1378-518: The Songhai people . Some scholars consider the Zarma people to be a part of and the largest ethnic sub-group of the Songhai – a group that includes nomads of Mali speaking the same language as the Zarma. Some study the group together as Zarma-Songhai people. However, both groups see themselves as two different people. Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan , Tal Tamari and other scholars have stated that
1431-582: The Zima or priests and Islamic clerics had to be initiated but did not automatically inherit that profession, making the cleric strata a pseudo-caste. According to Ralph Austen, a professor emeritus of African history, the caste system among the Zarma people was not as well developed as the caste system historically found in the African ethnic groups further west to them. Louis Dumont , the 20th-century author famous for his classic Homo Hierarchicus , recognized
1484-436: The 19th century military, eventually conquering much of the voltaic plateau (southern Burkina Faso , northern Ghana ). The slave trade and slave raiding were historically important parts of the society and economy of the Niger river valley, and there is textual evidence annual raids undertaken by Sunni 'Ali and Askiya Muhammad to capture slaves, for domestic use and export to North Africa. Sahelian societies, including
1537-463: The FGM practice. According to UNICEF, these efforts have successfully and noticeably reduced the practice to a prevalence rate in the single digits (9% in Zarma ethnic group in 2006 ), compared to east-North Africa (Egypt to Somalia) where the FGM rates are very high. The Zarma villages traditionally consist of walled off compounds where a family group called windi lives. Each compound has a head male and
1590-585: The Nilo-Saharan family is Old Nubian , one of the oldest written African languages, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. This larger classification system is not accepted by all linguists, however. Glottolog (2013), for example, a publication of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, does not recognise the unity of the Nilo-Saharan family or even of the Eastern Sudanic branch; Georgiy Starostin (2016) likewise does not accept
1643-533: The World Health Organization studies, in Zarma culture the female circumcision is called Haabize . It consists of two rituals. One is ritual cutting away the hymen of new born girls, second is clitoridectomy between the ages of 9 and 15 where either her prepuce is cut out or a part to all of clitoris and labia minora is cut then removed. The operation has been ritually done by the traditional barbers called wanzam . Niger has attempted to end
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1696-567: The Zarma or Songhay, but who have traceable historical distinctions include the Gabda, Tinga, Sorko, Kalles, Golles, Loqas and Kurtey peoples. The Zarma language is one of the southern Songhai languages , a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Because of the common language and culture, they are sometimes referred to as "Zarma Songhay" (each also may be spelled "Djerma" and "Songhai"). Zarma oral traditions place their origins in
1749-702: The Zarma people at the end of the 1890s, during a period of intra-ethnic conflict. The French established a partnership with the Zarmakoy Aouta of Dosso , building a military post there in November 1898. From 1901 to 1903 the area was plagued by natural disasters such as famines and locust attacks, as the French increased their presence. The French relied on the Dosso post and Niger river valley as supply hubs as they attempted to establish their colonial control all
1802-437: The Zarma people have traditionally been a socially stratified society, like the Songhai people at large, with their society featuring castes . According to the medieval and colonial era descriptions, their vocation is hereditary, and each stratified group has been endogamous. The social stratification has been unusual in two ways; one it embedded slavery, wherein the lowest strata of the population inherited slavery, and second
1855-584: The Zarma were the ruling class of the Gao Empire , later a vassal of the Mali Empire . In the early 14th century they were defeated by the rising Sonni dynasty , founders of the Songhai Empire. The surviving Za became the leaders of small Zarma principalities. Some helped Askia Muhammad overthrow Sonni Baru in 1493, but did not return to power. After leaving Gao, the Zarma first settled in
1908-465: The Zarma, have historically been based on slavery from far before colonialism. According to Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan , slaves accounted for two-thirds to three-quarters of the total population of the Songhay-Zarma people, similar proportions to other ethnic groups in pre-colonial West Africa. However, Bruce Hall cautions that while it is "certainly true that the majority of population" had
1961-417: The Zarma-Songhai people have included the kings and warriors, the scribes, the artisans, the weavers, the hunters, the fishermen, the leather workers and hairdressers (Wanzam), and the domestic slaves (Horso, Bannye). Each caste reveres its own guardian spirit. Some scholars such as John Shoup list these strata in three categories: free (chiefs, farmers and herders), servile (artists, musicians and griots), and
2014-614: The Zarmaganda , later expanding south into the Dallol Bosso valley and Dosso by the 17th century. Forming a number of small communities, each led by a chief or ruler called Zarmakoy , these polities were in conflict for economically and agriculturally attractive lands with the Tuareg people , the Fula people and other ethnic groups in the area. The Zabarma Emirate was founded by itinerant Zarma preachers and horse traders in
2067-607: The centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama , Kuliak , and Songhay ) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan , through which the Nile River flows. In his book The Languages of Africa (1963), Joseph Greenberg named
2120-404: The current name Nilo-Saharan for the resulting family. Lionel Bender noted that Chari–Nile was an artifact of the order of European contact with members of the family and did not reflect an exclusive relationship between these languages, and the group has been abandoned, with its constituents becoming primary branches of Nilo-Saharan—or, equivalently, Chari–Nile and Nilo-Saharan have merged, with
2173-578: The distribution of Nilo-Saharan reflects the waterways of the wet Sahara 12,000 years ago, and that the protolanguage had noun classifiers , which today are reflected in a diverse range of prefixes, suffixes, and number marking. Dimmendaal (2008) notes that Greenberg (1963) based his conclusion on strong evidence and that the proposal as a whole has become more convincing in the decades since. Mikkola (1999) reviewed Greenberg's evidence and found it convincing. Roger Blench notes morphological similarities in all putative branches, which leads him to believe that
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2226-602: The family is likely to be valid. Koman and Gumuz are poorly known and have been difficult to evaluate until recently. Songhay is markedly divergent, in part due to massive influence from the Mande languages . Also problematic are the Kuliak languages , which are spoken by hunter-gatherers and appear to retain a non-Nilo-Saharan core; Blench believes they might have been similar to Hadza or Dahalo and shifted incompletely to Nilo-Saharan. Anbessa Tefera and Peter Unseth consider
2279-458: The family with the following branches. The Chari–Nile core are the connections that had been suggested by previous researchers. Koman (including Gumuz) Saharan Songhay Fur Maban Central Sudanic Kunama Berta Eastern Sudanic (including Kuliak , Nubian and Nilotic ) Gumuz was not recognized as distinct from neighbouring Koman; it was separated out (forming "Komuz") by Bender (1989). Lionel Bender came up with
2332-572: The figure in 2010 might be half again higher, or about 60 million. The Saharan family (which includes Kanuri , Kanembu , the Tebu languages , and Zaghawa ) was recognized by Heinrich Barth in 1853, the Nilotic languages by Karl Richard Lepsius in 1880, the various constituent branches of Central Sudanic (but not the connection between them) by Friedrich Müller in 1889, and the Maban family by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes in 1907. The first inklings of
2385-516: The group and argued it was a genetic family. It contained all the languages that were not included in the Niger–Congo , Afroasiatic or Khoisan families. Although some linguists have referred to the phylum as "Greenberg's wastebasket ", into which he placed all the otherwise unaffiliated non- click languages of Africa, other specialists in the field have accepted it as a working hypothesis since Greenberg's classification. Linguists accept that it
2438-494: The name Nilo-Saharan retained. When it was realized that the Kadu languages were not Niger–Congo, they were commonly assumed to therefore be Nilo-Saharan, but this remains somewhat controversial. Progress has been made since Greenberg established the plausibility of the family. Koman and Gumuz remain poorly attested and are difficult to work with, while arguments continue over the inclusion of Songhai. Blench (2010) believes that
2491-415: The poorly attested Shabo language to be Nilo-Saharan, though unclassified within the family due to lack of data; Dimmendaal and Blench, based on a more complete description, consider it to be a language isolate on current evidence. Proposals have sometimes been made to add Mande (usually included in Niger–Congo ), largely due to its many noteworthy similarities with Songhay rather than with Nilo-Saharan as
2544-732: The same ethnicity as the neighboring Songhaiborai , although the two groups claim differences, having different histories and speaking different dialects. They are sometimes lumped together as the Zarma-Songhay or Songhay-Zarma . The Zarma people are predominantly Muslims of the Maliki - Sunni school, and they live in the arid Sahel lands, along the Niger River valley which is a source of irrigation, forage for cattle herds, and drinking water. Relatively prosperous, they own cattle, sheep, goats and dromedaries , renting them out to
2597-486: The six branches of Central Sudanic alongside his more explicit proposal for East Sudanic. In 1950 Greenberg retained Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic as separate families, but accepted Westermann's conclusions of four decades earlier in 1954 when he linked them together as Macro-Sudanic (later Chari–Nile , from the Chari and Nile Watersheds). Greenberg's later contribution came in 1963, when he tied Chari–Nile to Songhai, Saharan, Maban, Fur, and Koman-Gumuz and coined
2650-456: The slave class. The servile group were socially required to be endogamous, while the slaves could be emancipated over four generations. The traditionally free strata of the Zerma people have owned property and herds, and these have dominated the political system and governments during and after the French colonial rule. Within the stratified social system, the Islamic system of polygynous marriages
2703-545: The social stratification among Zarma-Songhai people as well as other ethnic groups in West Africa, but suggested that sociologists should invent a new term for West African social stratification system. Other scholars consider this a bias and isolationist because the West African system shares all elements in Dumont's system, including economic, ritual, spiritual, endogamous, elements of pollution, segregative and spread over
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#17327987898062756-536: The total population of Zarma people as of 2013 has been generally placed over three million, but it varies. They constitute several smaller ethnic sub-groups, who were either indigenous to the era prior to the Songhai Empire and have assimilated into the Zarma people, or else are people of Zarma origins who have differentiated themselves some time in the precolonial period (through dialect, political structure, or religion), but these are difficult to differentiate according to Fuglestad. Groups usually referred to as part of
2809-473: The way to Chad . This led to conflicts with the Zarma people. French colonial rulers established mines throughout West Africa staffed with African labor, many of whom were migrant Zarma people. Thousands of Zarma travelled to various mines, as well as to build roads and railroads. These laborers followed pre-colonial raiding pathways towards the Gold coast, with colonial mines provided economic opportunities and
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