Society in Imperial Jolof
The Portuguese arrived in the Jolof Empire between 1444 and 1510, leaving detailed accounts of a very advanced political system. There was a developed hierarchical system involving different classes of royal and non-royal nobles, free men, occupational castes and slaves. Occupational castes included blacksmiths, jewellers, tanners, tailors, musicians and griots. Smiths were important to the society for their ability to make weapons of war as well as their trusted status for mediating disputes fairly. Griots were employed by every important family as chroniclers and advisors, without whom much of early Jolof history would be unknown. Jolof's nobility were nominally animists, but some combined this with Islam. However, Islam failed to fully penetrate Wolof society until about the 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Jolof Empire
Famous quotes containing the words society in, society and/or imperial:
“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from preconising [proclaiming] its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.”
—J. Enoch Powell (b. 1912)
“This is no war for domination or imperial aggrandisement or material gain.... It is a war ... to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)