Modibawa — The Tribes of the Fulani · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Plate XIII · THE LEARNED · The Tribes of the Fulani

Modibbo means "the learned one" — and the Modibawa are the line named for it: a clan of teachers, judges, and scribes whose pens served the courts of the emirates. Where other houses gave the caliphate its thrones and lances, this one gave it the men who could read the law and write the record.

The plate is the written line itself: rows of flowing calligraphic strokes running edge to edge like a page, one passage lifted in slate — the sentence still being written.

Survey-plate artwork on heavyweight cotton. Front: the Modibawa 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.