Peoples of Middle Guinea
The Peul
The Peul belong to a large ethnic group spread through much of West Africa from Senegal to Lake Chad. Their language, Poular, is spoken by about 7 million people. More than 80 percent of the Guinean Peul live in the Fouta Djallon. Their principal concentrations are in the Labé, Pita, Dalaba, and Mamou administrative regions, but they constitute the majority in most of the Fouta Djallon. Outside of Guinea they live mainly in the Fouta Toro of Senegal, in the Macma region of Mali, and in the Adamawa highlands of Nigeria and Cameroon. Smaller groups are located elsewhere in West Africa. Each speaks a distinctive, though mutually intelligible, dialect. The Peul have used arabic script to create a vernacular, essentially religious, literature. The Koran, for example, has been translated word for word into P'oular the way it is spoken in the Fouta Djallon, and there is also a body of secular poetry and prose.
The ultimate point of Peul origin is still at issue, but their nomadic ancestors are thought to have come from the area north of the Sénégal River and to have moved gradually south and eastward during the last 400 or 500 years. The Peul started coming to the Fouta Djallon during the sixteenth century and perhaps earlier. They lived among the sparsely settled indigenous cultivators and hunters, such as the Soussou and Dialonké, with whom they seemed to have had amicable relations.
Nomads and settled cultivators developed a symbiotic relationship that was advantageous to both. The Peul supplied milk and animal products from their herds in exchange for produce from cultivators' fields. In return for caring for the villagers' livestock, the nomads were allowed to pasture their own herds in the cultivated fields after the annual harvest, thus providing fertilizer. Gradually many of the Peul became sedentary or semisedentary cultivators as well as stockraisers. Some had already become partially sedentary in Macma before coming to the Fouta Djallon.
During the eighteenth century an Islamic holy war started in the Fouta Toro of Senegal. Under its impetus many more Peul came to the Fouta Djallon of Guinea, and great numbers of the Muslim converts then turned on the unbelievers in their area. Eventually, after a long series of alliances and internal struggles, most of what is present-day Middle Guinea was brought under direct Peul control. Most of the original inhabitants who did not leave became serfs to Peul masters. In present-day Guinea at least one-third of the people of the Fouta Djallon by the Peul.
Although most Peul consider themselves Muslims, many differ little from their non-Muslim neighbors in religious practice. According to legend, the Peul are descended from four sons of Omar ibn Assi, reputedly the first to bring Islam to the Macma region in what later became Mali. Each son is considered to be the founder of one of the four great tribes into which the Peul are traditionally divided—Dialloubé, Ourebé, Ndayébé, and Ferobé. Historically prominent tribal names; such as Diallo, Ba or Baldé, Ban, and So, are still current but no longer signify organized kin groups.
Under the influence of sedentation and Islam, a social hierarchy developed among the Peul with a hereditary nobility at the top and hereditary slaves at the bottom. It no longer exists, but the attitudes associated with this system survive in attenuated form. Social, economic, and psychological habits of dependency, built up over generations, have given way only slowly. The severance of traditional dependency relationships left a patchwork of Peul, Dialonké, Malinké, and other settlements in the Fouta Djallon. Communities that once were integral parts of a feudal hierarchy dominated by the Peul have become formally independent. The closeness of the feudal past, with all the class and caste consciousness it generated, is still an obstacle to the equitable political and social integration of these communities.
In the Fouta Djallon area, aristocratic Peul families, although they sometimes live less well than their former serfs, persist as a social elite in their local communities and continue to provide much of the religious and even political leadership, despite the government's attempt to break their hold on the area.
The Dialonké
The Dialonké (Djallonké, Dyalonké), who call themselves Jallonké, are considered by some simply a branch of the Soussou. They are said to be indigenous to the south and central part of the Fouta Djallon, which the Peul named after them. During the holy war, which began about 1727, most were reduced to serfdom. Those few who accepted Islam remained free and were allowed to keep their land. Many, however, left, going either south to the foothills of the mountains in Mamou Administrative Region or east to live among the Malinké of Upper Guinea, especially in the administrative region of Faranah. Smaller concentrations are found in the Kouroussa Administrative Region. Additional Dialonké are located in Senegal.
The main activity of the Dialonké is cultivation, but they also raise a few animals and engage in trade. There exists among them a caste of ironsmiths, whose women are potters, and a special caste of professional bards.
The Diakhanké
The Diakhanké live in an enclave at Touba and in a satellite village called Toubanding (little Touba) in Peul country in the Middle Guinea administrative region of Gaoual. The ancestors of this group came there in the late 1700s from Mali and were probably partly Soninké, the ethnic group that had constituted the basic population of the Ghana Empire. Diakhanké men are respected by the Peul as greatly learned and deeply religious. Some of their ancestors are reputed to have adopted Islam in the eighth century. In contemporary times at least one son in each family spends many years in Koranic studies with a noted Islamic scholar.
The economic situation of the Diakhanké gradually deteriorated in the first half of the twentieth century after the 1905 government decree freeing the slaves who had worked their land. From then on the Diakhanké had to cultivate their fields and could devote less time to religious teachings, which had been their primary source of income. Some teachers, whose students pay for tuition by working in the fields, however, continue to be fairly wealthy. Some Diakhanké have moved to the urban environments of Boké and Conakry.
The Tenda
The name Tenda covers five groups and seems to have been applied by the Peul to the Coniagui, Bassari, Badyaranké, Boeni, and Mayo. The five groups share some cultural traits that they have retained in the midst of very different societies, either Malinké or Peul. Ethnologists range them among the original inhabitants of that region who were once much more widespread but were pushed long ago into a few recesses by other ethnic groups.
The Coniagui, Bassari, and Badyaranké live around Youkounkoun in the northern part of Middle Guinea. The Coniagui and the Bassari straddle the Guinea-Senegal border, and many have migrated toward the Senegalese towns. Some also live in Guinea-Bissau. Both groups are matrilineal, tracing succession through females. The Badyaranké, who are related to both the Coniagui and the Bassari, seem to have been influenced by the Manding and might even be part Manding. The Boeni might be Bassari who have become Muslims. There is little difference between them and the Mayo.
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