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In 1999 UNESCO inscribed Sukur, located in the Mandara mountains of northeast Nigeria, on the World Heritage List. The citation calls it an exceptional landscape illustrating a form of land-use that marks a critical stage in human settlement and its relationship with its environment. The cultural landscape of Sukur is also eloquent testimony to a strong and continuing spiritual and cultural tradition that has endured for many centuries.
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Sukur is an anomaly among World Heritage sites in that it is virtually unknown beyond its immediate area. This site is being developed to introduce Sukur to the wider world by assembling as much information on its unique society and rich, self-reliant culture as is available in archives, publications, and the data collected by Nic David and Judy Sterner in the context of the Mandara Archaeological Project. Other materials, some hopefully contributed by the Sukur themselves, will be added as they become available.
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| The term 'Mandara montagnards'is commonly applied to the indigenous peoples of the Mandara highlands, though it should be recognized that they are often closely related culturally to neighbors on the plains, for example the Wandala of Mora and the plains to the north, the Gisiga who live south of Maroua, and the Pabir and Bura who live some distance west of the Margi Dzirngu (literally Margi of the mountain). They all speak languages of the Central branch of the Chadic family of languages. This is not true of the Choa (or Shuwa) Arabs who speak a Semitic language of a amily distantly related to Chadic. The Kanuri speak a Saharan language of a different phylum, and teh Fulbe a West Atlantic language of a third language phylum. In fact the only indigenous phylum not represented in this area is Khoi-San, which includes the languages of the San (Bushmen) of southern Africa. |
| The Sukur calendar runs by the moon and has 13 months. This might seem to pose problems as a mean lunar month is 29.53059 days and thirteen months total 383.8977 days as against the 365.25 day solar year. However, the changing seasons are more important to the Sukur and most other African peoples than astronomical calculations. So they adjust the calendar according to the seasons, and particularly according to the coming of the rains. Thus, if the rains are early, the 13th month may be cancelled, or if late, the first month can be repeated. Ceremonies are tied to the months and to the phases of the moon. For example, however many days are set aside for the final, celebratory, phase of 'Ber the male youths' initiation, the dances end on the first day of the 6th month (days being calculated from dusk to dusk) when the new moon becomes visible. |
| Web | http://www.sukur.info/ |
Sukur or Sakun?
Sukur is the name used by others. The Sukur call the place, themselves, and their language 'Sakun' or 'Sakwun.' There is neither a published dictionary nor a grammar.
There at present no lingua franca in the region. Very few residents of the Sukur plateau speak any English, which until recently was learned in schools on the plain. Older men often spoke some Fulfulde (Fulani) while younger men were frequently relatively fluent in Hausa, which is expanding in Adamawa state at the expense of Fulfulde. Although ND was once competent in Fulfulde, neither he nor the vast majority of respondents had the mastery required to use Fulfulde as the vehicular language of fieldwork. Moreover many Sukur regard Fulfulde as the language of a former oppressor. |
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