Combative Contests in the Western Savannah
Wrestling was a favourite sport across the region. On the western side of the savannah it served as a means to attain status and honour in the region of the Gambia river. Here, large Mandinka villages were divided into various wards, and the age grades of these competed fiercely.
Only the best were chosen to represent the village against other villages. These championship combats between the principal fighters from different communities were the occasion for boasts, ritual taunts, drumming and elaborate praise singing. The Mandinka followed the wider western African pattern in which these championship combats allowed successful wrestlers to gain great prestige regardless of their social class. Bakari Sidibe and Winifred Galloway note that many of the most famous Gambian chiefs ‘had previously been talented wrestlers in their youth. Even a slave could gain greater prestige, respect and adoration than most freemen could only wish for.'[868] Thus wrestling provided a much more egalitarian avenue to honour and status than equestrian combat had previously.To the east of the Niger bend the Hausa people wrestled in a variety of styles that represented gradations of ritual violence. As in other areas, where wrestlers exhibited their bravery by tying a bell or gourds around their waists, risking painful falls if thrown on their backs, the Hausa people practised four distinct wrestling styles. These ranged from wrestling with limited grappling holds all the way to wrestling that incorporated striking with hands and feet. Hausa practised two forms of pugilism: dambe and shanci. Dambe was a form of boxing with a spear and shield style, in which a single bound fist was used to strike the opponent while the other hand was used like a shield for defence. In another more dangerous kind of dambe, referred to as leopard boxing, a hoe or rake-like blade was attached to the ‘glove' and was capable of inflicting serous wounds.
Similarly, shanci was a Hausa form of fighting with razor-sharp iron bracelets. These pugilistic traditions influenced the two more violent forms of wrestling. When explorer Hugh Clapperton passed through Hausaland in the 1820s, he requested to see a friendly wrestling match, yet, ‘the combatants seized each other's heads under their arms, beat them with their free hand, at the same time sharply raising their knees to deliver agonising strikes against their opponents' testicles'. Even more violent than this pankration-style wrestling was kokawar karfe, which incorporated the bladed blows of leopard boxing into the matches.[869] These most violent contests remained widespread in the rural areas where less syncretic forms of Islam had not yet undermined such practices. Stricter urban forms of Islam tended to gradually replace competitive honour and the glorification of martial heroes with moral respectability and focus on the Prophet.The roles that wrestling played among agriculturalists like the Hausa were usually filled by stick fighting among African pastoralists, as can be seen in the case of the Fula. The Fula (also known as Fulani or Fulbe) emerged as a unique West African ethnic group around the tenth century and spread from the Senegal Valley eastwards across the savannah, often living in symbiosis with local agriculturalists. The Masina Fula on the internal flood plain of the Niger were initially subordinate to Songhay and later Segu from whom they adopted horses and the epic literature of griots. The epic accounts of Masina's leading eighteenth-century mounted aristocrats illustrate that ritual violence was a central feature of their sense of heroism. One such hero was Hambodedio, ruler of Kounari. In the tales about him, his wife encouraged him to challenge other heroes in the region. One such challenge took place over a series of competitions in which Hambodedio first overcame his challenger in the mankala board game, fought him to a draw in a duel of magic, then finally defeated his rival in physical combat.
Silamka, another Masina knight, led a failed rebellion over taxation against Segu in which he heroically faced Segu's champion in ritual combat before his rebel forces were crushed by the much larger army of Segu.[870] Yet stoic bravery in the face of violence was by no means limited to mounted elites among the Fula. All Fula men were socialised to endure the pain of violence through an ordeal of reciprocal flagellation known as sharo. In this ordeal, rival Fula youths took turns striking each other with a stick. The recipient stood welcoming the blow while bystanders closely observed his face for any change in expression. Any sign of wincing or facial expression whatsoever was a failure in Fula stoicism, and the youth would have to repeat the ordeal.While the sharo demonstrated the ability to endure suffering stoically, at the core of pastoralist socialisation was the ability to inflict punishment on challengers through the art of stick fighting. Violent masculinity as expressed in stick fighting was a natural companion to pastoralism. Young bulls would naturally occasionally challenge their herdsmen just as they challenged the alpha bull. The Fula recognised these challenges by bulls and responded by flourishing a herding stick and a brisk charge towards them. If the bull did not signal submission or retreat, the herdsman beat it into submission with a stick. Thus the necessity for unflinching courage during the sharo and the ability to inflict serious damage in stick fighting. Stick fighting was a form of entertainment for young boys, but these skills would, later in life, help to ward off human or animal threats to a man's cattle. The fact that cattle were under constant threat of potential theft made Fula herdsmen as sensitive to human insult as they were to bovine challenges. Such affronts were met with stick duelling. Herdsmen who could not establish their honour through stick fighting were at risk of having their cattle stolen by their peers. In the early eighteenth century a new Fula group specialising in Islamic law and education spread through the rural areas of the savannah. Strict Islam had for centuries been primarily an urban phenomenon at best, but when these preachers were able to call the rural pastoral Fula to their message, their martial ethos made them a fierce fighting force. They conquered existing polities and established a number of large Islamic states, including the Sokoto caliphate in the area formally under Hausa rule and the new empire of Masina, which brought the former states of Songhay, Bambara and Arma into the new Fula theocracy.