The Bambara are a Mandé ethnic group who inhabit most of West Africa, particularly southern Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. They are known locally as Bamana or Banmana and are one of the most culturally significant ethnic groups in West Africa. The Bambara people have a unique blend of traditions, art, and a close relationship to their land.
There have been disagreements on the origins and meaning of the ethnolinguistic term “Bambara,” although allusions to the name date back to the early 18th century. The term “Bambara,” according to the Encyclopedia of Africa, means “unbeliever” or “infidel.” The group was said to have got the name because they opposed Islam after Tukulor conqueror El Hadj Umar Tal introduced it in 1854.
In addition to its widespread use as a reference to an ethno-linguistic group, Bambara was also used to identify captive Africans who originated in Africa’s interior, maybe in the upper Senegal-Niger region, and were carried to the Americas via Senegalese coast ports. As early as 1730, at the slave-trading station of Gorée, the word Bambara referred solely to slaves already in the service of the local aristocrats or the French.
According to 101lasttribes, the Bambara descended from the Mandinka royal family. They founded the Mali Empire in the thirteenth century. Manding and Bambara are both members of the Mandé ethnic group, whose earliest known history dates back to locations near Tichitt (in southern Mauritania), where urban centers emerged as early as 2500 BC. By 250 BC, the Bozo, a Mandé subgroup, had established the city of Djenne.
Between 300 and 1100 AD, the Soninke Mandé controlled Western Mali and led the Ghana Empire. When the Mandé Songhai Empire collapsed in 1600 AD, many Mandé-speaking communities in the upper Niger river basin withdrew inward. The Bambara reappeared in this environment with the establishment of a Bambara Empire in the 1740s, as the Mali Empire began to fall around 1559.
The Bambara language is the language of people of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 4,000,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca in Mali (it is estimated that about 80 percent of the population speak it as a first or second language). It is subject-object-verb language and has two tones. This is also spoken to a lesser extent in Burkina Faso and Senegal (including second language users).
Since the 1970s, Bambara has been primarily written in the Latin alphabet, with some added phonetic symbols. The vowels are a, e, ɛ (previously è), i, o, ɔ (formerly ò), and u. Accents can indicate tonality.
In 1949, Solomana Kante created the N’Ko alphabet as a writing system for West African Manding languages. N’Ko translates to ‘I say’ in all Manding languages. Kante established N’Ko in response to what he perceived to be notions that Africans were “cultureless people” because there had previously been no indigenous African writing system for his language. N’ko was first used as a Maninka alphabet in Kankan, Guinea, and then spread to other Manding-speaking areas of West Africa. N’ko and the Arabic alphabet are still used for Bambara, but the Latin script is far more widespread.
The Bambara are to a great extent intermingled with other tribes, and there is no centralized organization. Each small district, made up of a number of villages, is under a dominant family that provides a chief, or fama. The fama has considerable powers but must defer to a council of elders.
Bambara share many characteristics of the larger Mandé social system. Society is patrilineal and patriarchal, yet almost no women wear veils. Mandé culture is recognized for its strong fraternal and sorority orders (Ton), which were strengthened and kept throughout the Bambara Empire’s history. The first state arose as a reshaping of hunting and young Tons into a warrior class. As their conquests of its neighbors proved successful, the state established the Jonton (Jon = slave/kjell-slave), or slave warrior caste, which was supplied by fighters taken in battle. While slaves were barred from inheriting, the Jonton leaders established a distinct corporate identity. Their incursions provided the Segu economy with goods and slaves for trade, as well as bound agricultural laborers resettled by the government.
Bamanankans (or the Bambara People) generally give their children first names according to their birth order. The first son is named Nci, the second Ngolo, and the third Nzanke. It is also customary for the first son to be named after his father.
However, with the embracing of Islam, an increasing number of Bambara converts have adopted Muslim first names. As a result, their children and grandchildren no longer have traditional names because they are given the Muslim grandfather’s first name, even if their parents are not Muslims. It is even usual for children born into Christian homes to have Muslim names in commemoration of the individual who gave the infant his name.
Bambara life centered around farming, with millet being the predominant crop, followed by sorghum and groundnuts. Despite the harsh droughts, they cultivate maize, cassava, tobacco, and vegetables in their individual gardens. Bambara farmers raise cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and chickens, with Fulani herders trusted to manage their animals.
Economic changes in the mid-20th century included the introduction of such cash crops as peanuts (groundnuts), rice, and cotton into the pattern of subsistence agriculture. Many people migrated to the region’s towns.
