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Foumban | |
---|---|
Motto: | |
Coordinates: 5°43′N10°55′E / 5.717°N 10.917°E | |
Country | Cameroon |
Province | West |
Department | Noun |
Population (2005) | |
• Total | 83,522 (Census) |
Foumban or Fumban is a city in Cameroon, lying north east of Bafoussam. It has a population of 83,522 (at the 2005 Census). It is a major town for the Bamoun people and is home to a museum of traditional arts and culture. Foumban is known for its political significance in the formation of Cameroon's history and its cultural, tourism and economic potential. There is also a market and a craft centre, while Foumban Royal Palace contains a museum with information on Ibrahim Njoya who invented a new language script, Bamum script, and the artificial language Shümom. [1]
Foumban is the headquarters of the Noun Division of the Western province. It was the seat of the Bamoun Dynasty. [2] The Bamoun Dynasty was founded in the 1394 by Mfon Nshare Yen. Mfon Nshare became the first Mfon (what is today called Sultan [3] ) and was the founding father of Foumban, which became the capital city of the Bamoun Dynasty. This was as a result of the many wars against neighbouring kingdoms between 1394 and 1418. Since then, Founban has politically, culturally and economic grown into a tourist city of great renown in Cameroon. Its rich history and development has seen it surpass other cities and towns in the region, and it continues to attract hundreds of visitors.
Bamoun became a part of German Kamerun on July 14, 1884. The sultan was beheaded in a conflict with the Nso people from the North West Province of Cameroon, and his head carried off in 1889.
Foumban is one of Cameroon's major attractions and an important centre of traditional African art. Its jewel is the Palais Royal, seat of power for the Bamoun people. The ruler of the Bamoun is known as the sultan, and the Bamoun can trace the lineage of their sultan back to 1394.
The palace, completed in 1917, resembles a medieval chateau. It houses the Sultan's Museum, which contains a multitude of royal gowns, arms, musical instruments, statues, jewellery, masks and colourful bead-covered thrones carved in the shapes of the men who sat on them.
A few hundred metres south of the palace is the Musée des Arts et des Traditions Bamoun. This extensive collection has exhibits on Bamoun history and art, including cooking implements, musical instruments, pipes, statues, masks, gongs and an ornately carved xylophone. The road that connects the two museums is the Rue des Artisans, home to sculptors, basket makers, weavers and embroiderers, and one of the best places in Central Africa to buy wood carvings.
The economy was largely agricultural, and slave owning was practiced on a small scale. The Bamum kingdom also traded with neighboring populations. They imported salt, iron, beads, cotton goods and copper objects. The main economic activity in Foumban as of today is tourism and agriculture which is largely subsistence. Thousands of tourist visit this ancient city to take a look at the remains of arts and cultural display of the kings of this historic town. The streets are decorated with artistic designed but much more is the palace which protrudes and imposes at the center of the city. Its centrality symbolizes an era where the kings represents the nerve center of the entire community. Artwork is the major source of income. There is an art market, a tourist center and a museum called Musée des Arts et des Traditions Bamoun. [4] Agriculture is also carried out in small-scale subsistence farming. However, due to its very rich and fertile soil, the government of Cameroon has established a research centre to develop local hybrid of seeds to expand on the agricultural sector. The Institute for Agronomic Research (IRAD) has engage the community in partnership with the government in developing large-scale fishing in this landlocked community. Other economic activities include cattle rearing and palm oil production. Coffee is the main cash crop that is produced and sold in the world market. [5]
The Bamoun people trace their origin from Tikar in Cameroon. Thus it no surprise that the language of the Bamum kingdom was related to the Tikars in the western highlands of Cameroon. This apparently did not last long, and the language of the conquered, Mben, was adopted. The Bamun developed an extensive artistic culture at their capital of Foumban at the beginning of the 20th century. During Njoya's reign six dye pits containing various colours were maintained. The Mbum also imported indigo-dyed raffia-sewn cloth from the Hausa as royal cloth. This royal cloth was called Ntieya, and Hausa craftsmen were kept at palace workshops to supply nobles and teach the art of dyeing.
The West Region is 14,000 km2 of territory located in the central-western portion of the Republic of Cameroon. It borders the Northwest Region to the northwest, the Adamawa Region to the northeast, the Centre Region to the southeast, the Littoral Region to the southwest, and the Southwest Region to the west. The West Region is the smallest of Cameroon's ten regions in area, yet it has the highest population density.
The Bamiléké are a group of 90 closely related peoples who inhabit the Western High Plateau of Cameroon. According to Dr John Feyou de Hapy, Bamiléké means people of faith.
Bafoussam is the capital and largest city of the West Region of Cameroon, in the Bamboutos Mountains. It is the 3rd most important (financially) city in Cameroon, after Yaoundé and Douala. The communauté urbaine of Bafoussam, is a decentralized territorial collectivity. Originally called Urban Commune of Bafoussam, the communauté urbaine of Bafoussam, was born after the Presidential Decree N ° 2008/022 of January 17, 2008 and composed of three communes, namely: the Commune of Bafoussam I, the Commune of Bafoussam II (Baleng) and the Commune of Bafoussam III (Bamougoum).
Articles related to Cameroon include:
The Bamum, sometimes called Bamoum, Bamun, Bamoun, or Mum, are a Grassfields ethnic group located in now Cameroon. In 2018, the Bamum and Bamileke peoples accounted for about 24% of the country's population. The Kingdom of Bamum covers approximately 7,300 km. The Kingdom of Bamum was surrounded to the north by the territory of Cameroon, from the west and south-west the kingdom's boundary touches the River Nun while the Rivers Mape and the Mbam surround it to the east.
Bamum, also known as Shupamem, Bamun, or Bamoun, is an Eastern Grassfields language of Cameroon, with approximately 420,000 speakers. The language is well known for its original script developed by King Njoya and his palace circle in the Kingdom of Bamum around 1895. Cameroonian musician Claude Ndam was a native speaker of the language and sang it in his music.
The Tikar are a Central African people who inhabit the Adamawa Region and Northwest Region of Cameroon. They are known as great artists, artisans and storytellers. Once a nomadic people, some oral traditions trace the origin of the Tikar people to the Nile River Valley in present-day Sudan. Such ethnic groups were referred to in the 1969 official statistics as "Semi-Bantus" and "Sudanese Negroes." They speak a Northern Bantoid language called Tikar. One of the few African ethnic groups to practice a monotheistic traditional religion, the Tikar refer to God the Creator by the name Nyuy. They also have an extensive spiritual system of ancestral reverence.
Seidou Njimoluh Njoya ruled the Bamum people of Cameroon from 1933 to 1992 as the Sultan of Foumban and Mfon of the Bamun. Njimoluh was the son of Ibrahim Njoya, and he was educated in French, English, and the bamum script developed by his father. In 1931, in order to break the power of the Bamun, French administrators had exiled Ibrahim Njoya to Yaoundé. The Bamum nobles had been scattered due to the French occupation, but they eventually chose Njimoluh from among Ibrahim Njoya's 177 children and reached an agreement with the French authorities. Seidou Njimoluh Njoya became the 18th mfon of the Bamum in June 1933 after the death of his father.
Konrad Tuchscherer is an educator, scholar, writer, and public intellectual. Tuchscherer currently serves as the co-director of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in Cameroon and is associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at St. John's University.
Nji Oumarou Nchare is Co-Director of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in Foumban, Cameroon and Director of Cultural Affairs and Archivist at the Bamum Palace, Foumban. He is the founder (1978) of "Club Shümom" in Foumban, Director of the A-ka-u-ku and Shümom School Initiative, and hosts a regionally broadcast program on Radio Communautaire du Noun.
The Hausa are a native ethnic group in West Africa. They speak the Hausa language, which is the second most spoken language after Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Hausa are a culturally homogeneous people based primarily in the Sahelian and the sparse savanna areas of southern Niger and northern Nigeria respectively, numbering around 86 million people, with significant populations in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Togo, Ghana, as well as smaller populations in Sudan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Senegal, Gambia. Predominantly Hausa-speaking communities are scattered throughout West Africa and on the traditional Hajj route north and east traversing the Sahara, with an especially large population in and around the town of Agadez. Other Hausa have also moved to large coastal cities in the region such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Accra, Abidjan, Banjul and Cotonou as well as to parts of North Africa such as Libya over the course of the last 500 years. The Hausa traditionally live in small villages as well as in precolonial towns and cities where they grow crops, raise livestock including cattle as well as engage in trade, both local and long distance across Africa. They speak the Hausa language, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Chadic group. The Hausa aristocracy had historically developed an equestrian based culture. Still a status symbol of the traditional nobility in Hausa society, the horse still features in the Eid day celebrations, known as Ranar Sallah. Daura is the cultural center of the Hausa people. The town predates all the other major Hausa towns in tradition and culture.
Sultan Ibrahim Njoyac. 1860 – c. 1933 in Yaoundé, was seventeenth in a long dynasty of kings that ruled over Bamum and its people in western Cameroon dating back to the fourteenth century, and Neographer having invented the Bamum syllabary. He succeeded his father Nsangu, and ruled from 1886 or 1887 until his death in 1933, when he was succeeded by his son, Seidou Njimoluh Njoya. He ruled from the ancient walled city of Fumban.
The Kingdom of Bamoun was a Central African state in what is now northwest Cameroon. It was founded by the Bamun, an ethnic group from northeast Cameroon. Its capital was the ancient walled city of Fumban. The kingdom came under control of German West Africa in 1916.
Batoufam is a town and commune in the department of Koung-Khi, Cameroon. It has an estimated population of 27,000. Batoufam is also a language and is part of the Bantu group of languages.
The Bamum scripts are an evolutionary series of six scripts created for the Bamum language by Ibrahim Njoya, King of Bamum. They are notable for evolving from a pictographic system to a semi-syllabary in the space of fourteen years, from 1896 to 1910. Bamum type was cast in 1918, but the script fell into disuse around 1931. A project began around 2007 to revive the Bamum script.
Bambalang is a village located in the NorthWest Region of Cameroon. The village of Bambalang is one of the four villages that make up Ndop Central Sub Division and one of the thirteen villages that make up Ngoketunjia Division. Bambalang village saw most of its fertile land flooded upon the completion of the Bamendjin Dam in 1974 giving rise to some Islands like Mbissa, Nkeshie, Mbefekhu, Mishie and Mpayah. The Bamendjin Dam was constructed mainly to serve as a reservoir to feed the hydroelectric plant at Edéa. It was constructed across the Noun River, a tributary of the Sanaga River that operates the hydroelectric plant at Edea. The construction of this dam has served as a source of mixed feelings for Bambalang people because while those whose fertile land were flooded look at it as a mishap, it is beneficial to a cross section of the population given that it is contributing enormously to the economy of the village with thousands of fishermen whose lives and that of their families depend on fish gotten from the water. The vegetation is Guinea Savanna as farming has destroyed most forests with the exception of the "Pa’ah Ngwong" Forest at the heart of the village. Bambalang village is mainly a hillock stretching in a North West, South-East direction. It is narrow at the North-West and broadens towards the South East, appearing as a semi-Island or a promontory. Bambalang has a length of about 21 km and a width of about 8 km giving an area of about 168 km2 supporting a population of 20.863 people.
The Foumban Royal Palace is a historical building in the city of Foumban, capital of Noun. It is the seat of the Kingdom of Bamum, where the Chief-Superior of the peoples of the valley of the East bank of the Noun resides.
Nchare Yen, also referred to simply as Nchare, or by the English styling of the name as Nshare Yen, or just Nshare, was the founder of the Kingdom of Bamum, and one of the four kings who are mainly worshiped in the traditional Bamum religion due to their achievements in the Bamum society and culture. Nchare Yen is the brother of Ngon Nso, the founder of the Kingdom of Nso. Nchare Yen was the son of an unknown Tikar chief, who he and his sister broke away from to establish their own kingdoms. According to the book Rock of God, which discusses Nso's history,
Nso and Bamoun had been constantly quibbling, and to many, this seemed to be mostly sibling rivalry than any unavoidable conflict. Since Nso was founded by the sister, the brother always saw himself as the successor to the throne of Nso, according to the Tikar tradition that they both knew and respected.
Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya was a Cameroonian politician and traditional King.