Bambara (people)
The Bambara (or Bamana) are an ethnic group in southeast Mali on the central Niger River and in the adjacent areas of Burkina Faso .
Spread and residential area
The Bambara number about four million people. In Mali they make up 38 percent of the total population and in Burkina Faso around two percent.
language
The language, Bambara , is one of the Mande languages within the Niger-Congo languages . It is related to the Malinké language (dialect of Mandinka ).
Way of life and religion
The Bambara are traditional farmers. The agriculture still forms the most important economic basis of the land-living Bambara.
The traditional cults of the Bambara were and are still closely linked to agriculture. Above all, the initiation cults , the entry of a person into new, culturally conditioned stages of life, played and still play an important role in Bambara society. Individual levels of initiation or alliances are: Komo, N'domo, Tyi Wara, Nama and Kore. Outside the Niger Arch, these rites are best known for the masks that are worn during the ceremonies. Nya is a masked obsession cult in southeast Mali.
A significant part of the Bambara today are followers of Islam . However, the Bambara only converted to Islam much later than other peoples in this area. The waves of Islamization in the 19th century passed the Bambara by relatively without a trace. Only with the spread of French colonization and its ideologies did the conversion to Islam or, to a lesser extent, Christianity begin. These developments can be traced back to a deliberate demarcation or approach to the civilization claims proclaimed by the French colonial power, which the Africans should meet from the western point of view. This process was by no means limited to the Bambara, but took place increasingly in the sub-Saharan region, where Islam and Christian colonizers met in the 20th century.