Bassar (Togo)
| Bassar | |||
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| 9 ° 15 ′ 40 " N , 0 ° 46 ′ 50" E | |||
| Basic data | |||
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| State : |
 Togo
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| Region : | Kara | ||
| Prefecture : | Bassar | ||
| Height : | 315 m | ||
| Residents : | 25,200 (2005, calculation) | ||
Bassar (also Bassari ) is a small town in northern Togo in the Kara region and the administrative seat of the Bassar prefecture of the same name . The place is 57 kilometers northwest of Sokodé . It is estimated that Bassar has around 25,200 inhabitants.
Bassar is the settlement center of the Ntcham , who are called Bi-tchambe or Bassari in the local name . Since the middle of the 19th century, Bassar has been one of four nearby settlement centers of the Ntcham, most of the Bassar clans trace their origins back to the sacred Dikre forest, which is five kilometers to the northwest. Oral tradition can be traced back to chiefdoms at the end of the 18th century; Bassar has probably been important for a long time as a center for iron processing in what is now Togo and for long-distance iron trading. Iron ore is mined in Bassar on a very small scale. Bassar lies on the edge of the Atakora Mountains on a hull area that is bounded in the west and east by individual hills and small mountains that contain the ferrous rock.
The subjugation of the Togolese hinterland was carried out by the German colonial power in the mid-1890s, in 1897 a colonial substation was built in the area of Bassars and Bassar was assigned to the administrative district of Sokodé-Bassar. The iron deposits around Bassar and the traditional trade routes running through Bassar were of particular economic interest to the German colonial administration. In the northern administrative districts, the population was obliged to a particularly high degree to perform forced labor for the infrastructure and for experimental plantings.
The floors in the area are relatively fertile, for subsistence is in shifting a special small yams type settings grown next to thrive peanuts and millet , with a rotation in the two to three-year cultivation cycle, up to eight years following a fallow. Brown beans, cassava and shea butter are also grown.
gallery
Place in Bassar
Place in Bassar
Former German prison, today the assembly room of the Bassari
Head of the Bassari
Individual evidence
- ↑ DGSCN Republique Togolaise: Estimation de la population urbaine ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Philip Lynton de Barros: The Effect of the Slave Trade on the Bassar Iron Working Society, Togo. In: Christopher R. DeCorse: West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade. Archaeological Perspectives. Leicester University Press 2001, pp. 59f
Literature and web links
- v. Zech: Bassari . In: Heinrich Schnee (Ed.): German Colonial Lexicon . tape 1 . Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920, p. 139 ( online ).