Praise Poems as Historical Data: the Example of the Yoruba Oríkí

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolanle Awe
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe importance of oral traditions in the reconstruction of the history of non-literate peoples has virtually ceased to be a matter for debate and is now generally acknowledged. Indeed, within the last few years, historical research, based on such traditions has made possible histories of many societies in Africa. But in spite of this general acceptance, the diversity of oral traditions has not been so fully recognized as to make possible the analysis of each type as historical data. In this regard, the history of the Yoruba provides a good example. Their culture has accumulated around it a rich variety of oral traditions whose study has made significant contributions towards the understanding of their past. For the earlier period of their history, their historians have had to rely mainly on oral traditions; even for the latter period, in spite of the existence of written documents, oral traditions have still proved very useful in giving a balanced view of events. The tendency, however, has been for the historians of the Yoruba people to regard oral traditions as no more than personal recollections and generalized historical knowledge. In the main, they have failed to give cognizance to oral literature; experience elsewhere, however, has shown that a meaningful utilization of oral traditions in historical reconstruction cannot afford to neglect this third category, which is for historians of non-literate societies what literature is for the cultural and social historians of literate societies. Moreover, the Yoruba themselves treat some forms of oral literature as quasi-historical records.

Panel on South African Oral Traditions

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Mazisi Kunene ◽  
Daniel Kunene ◽  
Kofi Awoonor
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject of African oral literature is so vast that it would require more than an hour to present it in an understandable way, particularly to people for whom some of its dimensions may be new or completely unknown. Southern African oral literature is even more difficult to handle because there is not one southern African oral literature, there are several. These are divided not by languages, forms, or types, but rather by geography and history. The Sotho-speaking peoples, for instance, include the Kgatlas, the Ngwatos, the Pedis, and various other subgroups. Sotho literature does not necessarily follow the history of the Sotho nation, because there are several Sotho peoples distributed in different areas who are producing their own unique literatures. So in discussing the oral literature of southern Africa, we are actually discussing several literatures created by several peoples. If you happen to know the literature of one Sotho group, you are not necessarily versed in Sotho literature. You are versed only in the Sotho literature of a particular region. This is very important to understand.

scholarly journals History, Oral Transmission and Structure in Ibn Khaldun's Chronology of Mali Rulers

1996 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph A. Austen ◽  
Jan Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Oral Transmission ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Reliability ◽  
Praise Poetry

The early history of the Mali empire is known to us from two sources: Mande oral literature (epic and praise poetry) recorded over the last 100 years and Ibn Khaldun's Kitab al-ʿIbar (Book of Exemplars) written in the late four-teenth century. The list of Mali kings presented by Ibn Khaldun is precise, detailed, entirely plausible, and recorded not too long after the events it purports to describe. For scholars attempting to reconstruct an account of this West African empire, no other medieval Arab chronicler or, indeed, any Mande oral traditions provide comparable information for its formative period.There is, however, reason to question the historical reliability of Ibn Khaldun's account precisely on the grounds of its narrative richness. When read in relation to the general model of political development and decay which Ibn Khaldun worked out in the more theoretical Muqaddimah (“Prolegomena”) of Kitab al-ʿIbar, as well as the larger context of the work in which it is imbedded, the Mali kinglist takes on some characteristics of an instructive illustration rather than a fully empirical account of the past. Indeed Ibn Khaldun himself, in his contemplation of the basis for asabiyah (group solidarity) among bedouin peoples, cautions us against literal interpretation of genealogical accounts:For a pedigree is something imaginary and devoid of reality. Its usefulness consists only in the resulting connection and close contact.Ibn Khaldun is certainly not as ideologically engaged in constructing the royal genealogy of Mali as a bedouin spokesman might be in reciting the list of his own ancestors. Nevertheless, this great Arab thinker has something at stake in this story which needs to be given serious attention by all scholars concerned with either the events of the medieval western Sudan or the process by which they have been incorporated into more recent narratives.

Sudanese Historiography and Oral Tradition

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 117-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Southern Sudan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

One of the most curious aspects of Sudanese historiography is that it has almost completely ignored the ongoing attempts to apply the methods of historical criticism to oral tradition in reconstructing the African past. Though an awareness of these attempts on the part of Sudanese historians is not lacking, it has not gone beyond vague indications, casual remarks, and limited use of oral data. This paper investigates the apathy of Sudanese historiography with respect to oral traditions, drawing on articles on the writing of history in the Sudan, as well as on historical writings that have actually made use of oral traditions.Sudanese historiography here means writings by Sudanese on history-writing in the Sudan; general histories of the Sudan; and local histories of the Northern Sudan. The history of the Southern Sudan is excluded because the contribution of oral tradition in reconstructing the history of this region has been markedly different. I also distinguish between traditional (biographers, genealogists, etc.) and amateur historians on the one hand and modern historians on the other. The modern historians, with whom this article will deal exclusively, are graduates of the Department of History in the University of Khartoum (or a similar university by extension), which was established in the late 1940s,and who have been exposed to the Western critical spirit and modern techniques of historical research and writing.2 Unlike the modern historians, traditional and amateur historians have always made use of both oral traditions and written sources.

Some Reflections on the Oral Traditions of the Galinhas Country, Sierra Leone

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Adam Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Main Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

Whenever historians of Africa write: “According to tradition…”, they evade the crucial question of what kind of oral tradition they are referring to. The assumption that oral tradition is something more or less of the same nature throughout Africa, or indeed the world, still permeates many studies on African history; and even those who have themselves collected oral material seldom pause to consider how significant this material is or how it compares with that available in other areas.The majority of studies of oral tradition have been written by people who worked with fairly formal traditions; and those who, after reading such studies, go and work in societies where such traditions do not exist are often distressed and disappointed. There is therefore still a need for localized studies of oral tradition in different parts of Africa. As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, no work specifically devoted to the nature of oral tradition has been published, despite several valuable publications on the oral literature of the Limba and Mende. The notes that follow are intended to give a rough picture of the kind of oral material I obtained in a predominantly Mende-speaking area of Sierra Leone in 1977-78 (supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in 1973-75, 1980, and 1984). My main interest was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century history of what I have called the Galinhas country, the southernmost corner of Sierra Leone.I conducted nearly all of my interviews through interpreters and did not use a tape recorder more than a very few times. This was partly because the amount of baggage I could carry on foot was limited, but also because I soon found that some informants were disturbed by the tape recorder, and because it was difficult to catch on tape the contributions of all the bystanders.

Satire and the King of Aram

2011 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 646-656
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Robker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
History Of ◽  
1 Kings

Abstract The text of 1 Kings 20 has presented many exegetes with a fertile plain from which to reap a multitude of historical data about the history of Israel. Various concepts have been developed in order to approach the text, almost always gleaning some historical circumstances behind the text or recounted within the text. Every facet that could lead to a historical reconstruction based on this text has been explored in the last century. But what if such a study misses the point of this text? Maybe the composer of this text sought to present different information to the audience beyond purely historical data. With this in mind, we’ll take a renewed look at the narrative of 1 Kings 20. The text of 1 Kings 20 may or may not be interested in providing the reader with historical details; it is definitely interested in satirizing the king of Aram.

The Abandonment of Alofi Island (Western Polynesia) before Missionary Times

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Sand
Keyword(s):  
Historical Data ◽  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Alternative Scenario ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Local Impacts ◽  
Different Sources

Although early contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between Europeans and Pacific Islanders have been well documented from historical data, the possible local impacts on Oceanians have rarely been analyzed in any detail. Indigenous oral traditions and archaeology appear today as primary sources that complement the information from written records related to “discovery” expeditions and missionary-colonial testimonies. This chapter proposes to synthesize the data at hand on the Island of Alofi. Facing Futuna in Western Polynesia and known to have experienced a multi-millennia human settlement, the Island of Alofi was devoid of permanent occupation at the arrival of the French Missionaries in 1837. Relying on different sources, I will make the case of a probable first early-population collapse due primarily to the consequences of their first encounter, in 1616, with the Dutch expedition of Le Maire and Schouten. An alternative scenario of the recent History of the Archipelago will be proposed, revising the orthodox mainstream publications on the subject. The regional as well as global outcomes of this proposal are far-reaching as they impact our understanding of political changes in the Fiji-West Polynesian triangle as well as question the relevance of anthropological categories used in social reconstructions.

Understanding rural Zambia today: the relevance of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute

Africa ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kees van Donge
Keyword(s):  
Social Research ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Rural Zambia

Opening ParagraphIn the colonial period Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia, was a field for brilliant social research. The social scientists who worked at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (hereafter abbreviated to RLI) in Lusaka produced studies which can be found in libraries throughout the world. Yet the relevance of this literature for understanding present-day Zambia may not be immediately obvious. Our knowledge of society turns into historical knowledge, especially when great social changes such as decolonization take place. Social scientists inevitably capture one particular historical moment. The work of those connected with the RLI can therefore be treated as part of history; Kuper (1973) has characterised its role in the development of British anthropological thought as a part of the history of ideas, and Brown (1973, 1979) has written evocative accounts of the involvement of its members in the country as an example of the white man's presence in Africa.

The African Clergy and Historical Reconstruction: The Very Reverend J.B. Olafimihan's Iwe Itan Ofa

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeyinka O. Banwo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
African Region ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

One of the foremost achievements of missionary enterprise in the African region was the training of individuals, particularly clergymen, who came to play pioneering roles in the documentation of the history of their peoples. One of the reasons usually advanced by such chroniclers for taking part in this tedious attempts at historical reconstruction, is basically, to safeguard the history of their people and most especially, the need to prevent their history from being distorted, forgotten or sent into some oblivion. Examples of clergymen or missionary influenced personalities who have performed such tasks in Nigeria include Reverend Samuel Johnson, on the history of the Yoruba, J.D. Egharevba on the history of Benin, and Reverend Samuel Ojo, on the history of Ilorin and Shaki.These chronicles have their limitations. The writers often serve as public image launderers for the people they write about. As a result, a lot of bias and subjectivism is embellished in what they attempt to project. Historical facts are distorted in this process. The lack of the chroniclers' basic methods of historical research is also evident in their narrative method of historical writing. This approach does not provide any opportunity for proper historical analysis. In spite of the limitations of these chronicles, they have served as very useful sources of primary information for contemporary historians. More importantly, their writings have been able to create a sense of identity and cultural awareness among their intended audience. In other words they have sometimes proved more relevant and acceptable to the intended audience even more than the works of contemporary historians.2 It is with this hindsight that we examine Iwe Itan Ofa by The Very Reverend J.B. Olafimihan.

scholarly journals The Power of Systematic Doubt in Historical Enquiry

1974 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 109-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Common Reference ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View

Many readers have probably noticed that the manuals of historical method which deal with verbal societies are primarily concerned with the sources available and the application of a critique to them. This is true for McCall's or Gabel and Bennett's works on Africa. But what is to be done with the sources once they are ready for evaluation remains vague. How does one reconstruct the past? How does one explain, or eventually interpret, history? Of the two works mentioned, only the first pays some attention to the question of “historical synthesis.’ McCall lists three possibilities: (a) that the sources support each other; (b) that they contradict each other; and (c) that they have no common reference or meeting point. This last situation is the most common in African history and indicates merely that not enough is known and that eventually new data could lead to new interpretative situations-either (a) or (b). The manual stresses that sources should be classified by discipline so that comparison of sources yields either confirmation or contradiction, with obvious and known data reinforcing the validity of the result. Once this is achieved it would seem that the job is finished, except for the warning that historical reconstruction requires a certain type of mind: imaginative yet disciplined.Yet the job is not finished. By comparing we have only established the degree of validity of reported events or situations. We have only verified how the observation, to borrow a term from the scientific experimental method, is correct. The impression remains that historical research is fairly mechanical: to find sources, subject them to a critique, assemble them. Reconstruction follows, with suitable use of imagination. That is the craft. Yet anyone who works with historical materials knows that that is not the practice of the craft. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time features a police sergeant who more nearly exemplifies historical practice–he guesses, ponders, backtracks, and finds sources almost by intuition. If he had made a few more mistakes he would have been a recognizable historian at work. A recent volume, The Historian's Workshop, though impressionistic, also yields a more realistic picture. In the real world historians start out with a hunch, an idea which leads them to an interest in documents or in oral traditions. Then the data suggest what Popper calls a historical interpretation – “untestable points of view.” The practitioner feels that the interpretation is not enough. It should be doubted and controlled by reference to more data until the point is reached at which no more control is possible. Then the historian feels satisfied with the result–even though it still remains an interpretation, because there remains the selective point of view implicit in the idea that initiated the research.

Alchemy and Chemistry: Chemical Discourses in the Seventeenth Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferdinando Abbri
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
Modern Chemistry ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractThe landscape of seventeenth-century chemistry is complex, and it is impossible to find in it either a clear-cut distinction between alchemy and chemistry or a sort of simple identification of the two. The seventeenth-century cultural context contained a rich variety of "chemical" discourses with arguments ranging from specific experiments to the justification of the validity of chemistry and its novelty in terms of its extraordinary antiquity. On the basis of an analysis of the works by O. Borch, J.J. Glauber, and J. J. Becher, this paper tries to demonstrate that a historical reconstruction of "chemistry" must consider these different levels of the chemical debate. Only then will it be possible to appreciate the outstanding role played by G.E. Stahl in founding modern chemistry. The paper argues in favor of a contextualization of the historical research on seventeenth-century chemistry.

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