Ba'en — The Tribes of the Fulani · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Plate XV · PASTORAL FULƁE · The Tribes of the Fulani

Not every clan took a city. The Ba'en are one of the great cattle lineages of the pastoral Fulɓe — herders of the open range whose wealth walked on four legs and whose calabashes of milk fed the market towns of the north. While the dynastic houses ruled from palaces, the Ba'en kept the older economy running: camp to market, season after season.

The plate is a calabash count — rows of the halved milk gourd, two lifted in sage — the vessels by which a whole region was fed.

Survey-plate artwork on heavyweight cotton. Front: the Ba'en plate. Back: PL. 0, the Fulɓe mark — the zebu ringed by sixteen clans. Clan-detail histories in this line are drawn from oral tradition and vary by source.