Introduction

Introduction There are few art forms as intrinsically political as palace architecture. As both residence as well as the structure within which political decision-making occurs, the palace commonly constitutes the public identity of a ruler. Palaces in northern Cameroon also provide venues for judicial proceedings and con- tain prison cells, amongst other potential functions. In addition to the ruler himself, the palace is generally inhabited by his wives and concubines, their female servants, and a number of male guards. The vast majority of these resi- dents usually derive from local, indigenous populations, while the ruler is of the ruling Fulɓe ethnicity.1 It is through the lens of ethnicity that the architecture of this region has largely been viewed. In contrast, by focusing on the late nineteenth-century palace of Ngaoundéré, capital of Adamaoua Region, and with subsidiary research conducted at fourteen other palaces constructed since the early nineteenth century in Adamaoua and North Regions, this study considers the palace architecture of northern Cameroon as central to the for- mation of political authority in ways that cross ethnic boundaries. The majority of the research area for this study may be divided into a series of political entities, commonly referred to as lamidats, with Fulɓe leaders at the helm. The specific communities ruled by these leaders, or laamiiɓe (pl., sing. laamiiɗo) are composed of a politically dominant Fulɓe population, but who are a numeric minority amongst a number of other local identities, in- cluding most notably the Mboum, Dìì, Gbaya, Vouté, Namchi, Fali, Péré, and Bata. The suzerainty of the Fulɓe was established in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries after they arrived in the region from what are now northeastern Nigeria and southern Tchad. In the early nineteenth century, these lamidats all joined a larger empire that had been formed by Shehu Us- man dan Fodio, the religious and political leader of a jihadist movement who established his capital in Sokoto, northwestern Nigeria.2 Since this time, each lamidat has defined a unique, local identity that combines aspects of Fulɓe culture with those of its other constituent cultures, whether Mboum, Dìì, or otherwise. This tension between a common Fulɓe and local cultures is ex- pressed through the architectural forms of the palaces, which consequently 1 “Fulɓe” is the plural endonym, while the singular form is “Pullo.” Although technically incor- rect, I will use “Fulɓe” throughout as both the singular and the plural for simplicity. 2 Usman dan Fodio is the Hausa rendering of his name, although he was Fulɓe. I have cho- sen to use this form for the sake of simplicity as it is the most commonly used in academic literature. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��6 | doi �0.��63/97890043�6��6_00� <UN> 2 Introduction represent a plethora of identities and the specific historical circumstances that formed them. Until recently, however, the architecture of this region has for the most part been studied along ethnic lines. Typically, scholars have separated the primarily non-Muslim peoples of the mountainous areas, collectively referred to in common parlance as Montagnards or Kirdi, from the Muslim Fulɓe of the plains.3 This theoretical division of mountains from plains, non-Muslim from Muslim, Kirdi from Fulɓe, may be seen, for example, in the work of geographer Christian Seignobos, probably the most important scholar in treating the architecture specifically of northern Cameroon.4 Seignobos’s writing, accompanied by his exquisite drawings, identified a multitude of different forms across the north, with a second book intended, though never published, on the Muslim Fulɓe architecture of the plains. It is the architecture of the plains, and of the Fulɓe-dominated polities found there, that the current study highlights, thereby providing a more complete picture of northern Cameroon. While providing a balance to Seignobos’s work, I also contend that the ethnic distinctions prevalent in studies of the region are largely a mirage, just as Donald Wright has recognized for ethnic identities in The Gambia.5 To be sure, the division between Fulɓe and non-Fulɓe is demarcated with a great deal of animosity, exacerbated by an emphasis on ethnic distinctions in the colonial era that continues to be felt today. Close examination of the facts on the ground, however, has revealed extensive intermarriage between Fulɓe and non-Fulɓe in northern Cameroon, as well as a process of “Fulɓeization,” or 3 Notable in this regard is Jean-Pierre Beguin, Michel Kalt, Jean-Lucien Leroy, Dominique Lou- is, Jacques Macray, Pierre Pelloux and Henry-Noël Peronne, L’habitat au Cameroun (Paris: Editions de l’Union Française, 1952). Eldridge Mohammadou suggests that the term “Kirdi” was introduced to Cameroon from Tchad by the French. “Approche historique au problème du peuplement des monts du Mandara,” Sudan-Sahel Studies (Tokyo) 1 (1984): 140. Seignobos and Tourneux argue that while the term may have its immediate origin in Kanuri, in which language the exact same term is used, its ultimate origin is Arabic. They identify the term as -qird), meaning “ape, monkey.” Christian Seigno) قرد derived in Kanuri from the Arabic term bos and Henry Tourneux, Le Nord-Cameroun à tavers ses mots: Dictionnaire de termes anciens et modernes, Province de l’Extrême-Nord, Collection dictionnaires et langues (Paris: IRD édi- tions and Karthala, 2002), 154–57. This derivation would certainly express the pejorative con- notations which “Kirdi” holds in northern Cameroon. 4 Chistian Seignobos, Nord Cameroun: montagnes et hautes terres, Collection architectures tra- ditionnelles. (Roquevaire: Editions Parenthèses, 1982). 5 Donald R. Wright, “‘What Do You Mean There were No Tribes in Africa?’ Thoughts on Bound- aries—and Related Matters—in Precolonial Africa.” History in Africa 26 (1999): 409–26. <UN>.

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