ABSTRACT
Society refl ects the image of its own history, according to the Songhoy people. “Man” plays the role assigned to him by his ancestors.1 In Contribution to the History of the Songhay (Contribution à l’Histoire des Songhay) Jean Rouch (1953) articulates this understanding:
. . . There is no room for personal adventures in the order established by the society: that is why Askya, the conqueror of Sonni Baro, was fi nally scorned by his own children; his careless intervention would be the indirect cause of the collapse of Songhoy. . . . Sonni’s defeated sons . . . [were] the only ones who knew how to drive off later invasions . . . (p. 245)
In fact, Sonni Ali Ber’s sons kept and reinforced the spiritual inheritance and the local traditional know-how their forefathers had handed down to them from generation to generation. This chapter examines that inheritance.
