Segu

A detailed Summary of Segu

Using specific illustrations from Maryse Conde's novel Segu, this is an essay that discusses how the coming of Islam to Bambar society affected that people's traditional, political, social and economic practices as well as challenging the Bambaras' religious beliefs.

Before the arrival of Islam, Segu and its people, the Bambaras, were extremely different world from what they became under Islamic rule. The Bambaras were proud people with a long history in farming, and the wealthy ones worked with hundreds of slaves and planted millet, cotton and fonio (p. 4). Their currency was cowrie shells and gold dust, and they hadn't even heard of money, which came with the white man. With the coming of Islam, manufactured goods from Europe and North Africa were making their way into Bambara households (p. 324). Conde described it: "It was not unusual to see well-born young men in boots bought from some trader. Many families had silver dishes in their huts, and the Mansa proudly displayed to his friends a service of fine Chinese porcelain that he never actually used." Fetishists, they turned to all manner of objects and all manner of gods to assure their good fortune. For example, Dousika used a tooth twig to increase his

Their clothing also changed. Monzon Diarra wore a white cotton tunic and white trousers with animal horns and teeth and adorned arms. The Moslems, on the other hand, wore white caftans and trousers (p. 26). Bambara women often went bare-breasted before the incursion of Islam, but the Moslem religion required women to cover fully and it was rare to see such dress in the cities.

In a related vein, sexual habits also changed as it had been the practice of a man to take a concubine or two as well as several wives. Islam required them to limit the number of wives. Monzon, for example, felt Islam castrated men and wouldn't let them drink what they wanted (p. 28). Tiekoro had been used to having sex with his father's young slaves from the time he was 12 and he found the purity and chastity required in the Islamic religion to be torture (p. 83). Yet, the Islamic faith taught that the sex act was a defilement even between married people (p. 481). Alfa Guidado questions his own religion as he is slumped beside Tiefolo's corpse. "He suddenly understood there was no universal god; every man had the right to worship whomsoever he pleased; and to take away a man's religion, the keystone of his life, was to condemn him to death. Why was Allah better than Fero or Pemba? Who had decreed it?" he wondered.

Kemedijo, Cilas. The Curse of Writing: Genealogical Strata of a Disillusion: Orality, Islam-writing, and Identities in the State of Becoming in Maryse Conde's Segou. Research in African Literatures 27. (1996, December 1): 124.

The family unit was much more closed. In native Bambara culture, all of brothers' children called each brother father and all grew up under joint authority (p. 32). Under Islam, the family was much more separated. Women became what can only be termed uppety. "It had all started with Sira, going off back to Macina one fine day and breaking Dousika's heart. Then came Maryem, gathering her children together and leaving, refusing the husband tradition orda

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1344
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History