Auguste Dupuis-Yacouba

Auguste Victor Dupuis-Yacouba (born November 7, 1865 in Gland , Aisne Département , † January 1945 in Timbuktu ; also Dupuis-Yakouba ) was a French missionary and ethnologist in West Africa . He was considered a well-known example of a dropout in France between the wars .

Life

Auguste Dupuis' family came from Gland near Château-Thierry . His father, who ran a taproom in Paris and manufactured watch cases , died in 1875. After attending school with the deaconesses , Auguste Dupuis entered the minor seminary in Soissons at the age of eight , which was followed six years later by attending the major seminary . Then he went to the White Fathers in Algiers to complete a novitiate . There he learned Arabic and Kabyle . In 1894 he went with Augustin Prosper Hacquardon a mission trip to the south. The men traveled downstream in the Niger , reached Timbuktu via Mopti and founded the Sainte-Marie de Tombouctou mission station . Dupuis, who initially worked as a military priest, specialized in the study of classical Arabic and obtained a copy of the Tarikh es-Soudan Chronicle and fragments of Leo Africanus .

In 1901 the White Fathers called Dupuis back to Algiers. However, he refused, preferred a life as a fisherman on the Niger and resigned from the order. He married Salama, a woman from a wealthy Fulbe family , according to the Islamic and Christian rites . With Salama, who brought two children into the marriage, he had several children, including the later General Henri Dupuis-Yacouba . Auguste Dupuis adapted to the life of the locals and was nicknamed Yacouba ("Jacob"). He devoted himself to ethnographic research and learned Songhai , Tamascheq , Bambara and Fulfulde . In 1910 he founded a Koran school in Timbuktu. His relations with the French administration were maintained. Dupuis-Yacouba worked as a translator and as a judge under local customary law and took on other functions, from around 1920 to 1922 that of the district commander of Goundam .

The journalist Albert Londres described him in 1928 as "Yakouba le décivilisé" ("Yakouba the de- civilized "). William Buehler Seabrook named Dupuis-Yacouba in the title of his 1934 biography "White Monk of Timbuctoo" ("white monk of Timbuktu").

Fonts

• Manuel de la langue Soñgay parlée de Tombouctou à Say dans la boucle du Niger . Written with Augustin Prosper Hacquard. Maisonneuve, Paris 1897.
• Les Gow ou chasseurs du Niger. Legendary songaï from the region of Tombouctou . With a foreword by Maurice Delafosse . Ernest Leroux, Paris 1911.
• Notes on the principales circonstances de la vie d'un tombouctien . In: Revue d'ethnographie et de sociologie . t. 4, 1913, pp. 100-104 .
• Notes on Tombouctou. Vie journalière, habillement, Mobilier, etc . In: Revue d'ethnographie et de sociologie . t. 5, 1914, pp. 248-263 .
• Essai de méthode pratique pour l'étude de la langue songöi ou songäi, langue commerciale et politique de Tombouctou et du Moyen-Niger. Suivie d'une légende en songöi avec traduction et d'un dictionnaire songöi-français . Leroux, Paris 1917.
• Industries et principales professions des habitants de la région de Tombouctou . Emile Larose, Paris 1921.

Honors

• 1933: Knight of the Legion of Honor

literature

• Jean Hubert-Brierre: Auguste Dupuis-Yacouba . In: Hommes et destins . Tome XI. Afrique Noire. L'Harmattan, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-296-54603-5 , pp. 265-266 .
• White Owen: The Decivilizing Mission: Auguste Dupuis-Yakouba and French Timbuktu . In: French Historical Studies . Vol. 27, No. 3 , 2004, p. 541-568 .
• William Buehler Seabrook: The White Monk of Timbuctoo . Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York 1934.