Батыс Африкалық Сенуфо халқы

West African ethnic group

The Senufo people, also known as Siena, Senefo, Sene, Senoufo, and Syénambélé, are a West African ethnolinguistic group. They consist of diverse subgroups living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast, the southeastern Mali and the western Burkina Faso. The Senufo people are predominantly animists, with some who are Muslims. A 2013 estimate places the total over 3 million, with majority of them living in Ivory Coast in places such as Katiola, and some 0.8 million in southeastern Mali. Their highest population densities are found in the land between the Black Volta river, Bagoe River and Bani River. The northern Senufo are called "Supide or Kenedougou", found near Odienne, and who helped found an important kingdom of West Africa and challenged Muslim missionaries and traders. The southern Senufo are the largest group, numbering over 2 million, who allowed Muslim traders to settle within their communities in the 18th century who actively proselytized, and about 20% of the southern Senufo are Muslims. The third group is very small and isolated from both northern and southern Senufo. It belongs to the Gur branch of the Niger Congo language family, and consists of four distinct languages namely Palaka(also spelt Kpalaga), Djimini(also spelt Dyimini), and Senari in Côte d'Ivoire and Suppire( also spelt Supyire) in Mali, as well as Karaboro in Burkina Faso. Within each group, numerous subdivisions use their own names for the people and language; the name Senufo is of external origin. Palaka separated from the main Senufo stock well before the 14th century ad; at about that time, with the founding of the town of Kong as a Bambara trade route station, the rest of the population began migrations to the south, west, and north, resulting in the present divisions. The Senufo speaking people range from 800,000 to one million and live in agricultural based communities predominately located in the Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, Africa. Korhogo, an ancient town in northern Ivory Coast dating from the 13th century, is linked to the Senufo people. This separation of languages and sub ethnic groups may be linked to the 14th century migrations with its founding along with the Bambara trade route.

The Senufo people emerged as a group sometime within the 15th or 16th century. The Kénédougou dynastic rulers attacked their neighbors as well, such as the Zarma people and they in turn counterattacked many times between 1883 and 1898.

The Senufo people were both victims of and perpetrators of slavery as they victimized other ethnic groups by enslavement. The largest demand for slaves initially came from the markets of Sudan, and for a long time, slave trading was one an important economic activity across the Sahel and West Africa, states Martin Klein. Sikasso and Bobo Dioulasso were important sources of slaves captured who were then moved to Timbuktu and Banamba on their way to the Sudanese and Mauritanian slave markets. Those enslaved in Senufo lands worked the land, herds and served within the home. Their owner and his dependents also had the right to have sexual intercourse with female domestic slaves. The children of a female slave inherited her slave status.

The Senufo are predominantly an agricultural people cultivating corn, millet, yams, and peanut. Senufo villages consist of small mud brick homes. In the rainy southern communities of Senufo, thatched roofs are common, while flat roofs are prevalent in dry desert like north. The Senufo is a patriarchal extended family society, where arranged typically cousin marriage and polygyny has been fairly common, however, succession and property inheritance has been matrilineal. In this system the farmers, known as Fo no, and the artisans at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The term artisan encompasses different individual castes within Senufo society including blacksmiths (Kule), carvers (Kpeene), brasscutters (Tyeli), potterers, and leather workers, whose lives revolve around the roles, responsibilities, and structures inhabited by the individual class. Regionally, the Senufo are famous as musicians and superb carvers of wood sculpture, masks, and figurines. These endogamous divisions are locally called Katioula, and one of the strata in this division includes slaves and descendants of slaves. Typically, the Senufo villages are independent of each other, and each has a male secret society called Poro with elaborate initiation rituals in a patch of forest they consider as sacred. In addition, the Senufo people have Wambele and Typka, who perform sorcery and rituals. The goddess Maleeo has a partner, the god Kolocolo, who is seen as the identifying deity of the Sandogo, who granted the people marriage and this particular type of lineage to allow communication from humanity and the spirit world. The cubism and masks found in Senufo pieces were a significant influence for Pablo Picasso's African period. The term Senufo has become a category to art collectors and scholars, a symbolism for the artistic traditions of West Africa, starting with the early twentieth century. Old pieces of Senufo art are found in many leading museums of the world. Cornélius Yao Azaglo August, a photographer, created a photographical journal of Senufo people from 1955 onward.