Poetry
Oogirde malal
Not translated into English
Synopsis
A long didactic poem in the Pular of Fouta Djallon, the Filon makes the contents of the principal books of Islam accessible to those who do not know Arabic. In some five hundred lines of learned, austere form, it sets out the oneness of God, the practices of worship and the rules of Maliki law, which the author had studied in Arabic works, and urges the faithful to learn their religion in their own language, so that everyone understands what he recites and applies it without error.
Context
Also called Ma'dinus-Sa'aadati in Arabic, the poem is found, according to its editor, in the libraries of all the scholarly families of the country. The oldest manuscript studied, copied in 1845 during the author's lifetime, reproduces a text set down on sixteen wooden tablets in 1825 for a disciple, Tierno Saadu of Dalen. The Guinean linguist Alfâ Ibrâhîm Sow published a bilingual critical edition of it in 1971, based on four manuscripts and followed by a lexicon, in the Classiques africains series, of whose first thirteen volumes six were on works in Fula.
Who it is for
For those interested in literatures written in an African language before colonisation and in Fula religious poetry.
Prizes and reception
Marguerite Dupire reviewed it in 1975 in the journal L'Homme, stressing its resolutely didactic character.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.