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Mossi people. Map of Burkina Faso; the Mossi primarily in the pink area. The Mossi are a Gur ethnic group native to modern Burkina Faso, primarily the Volta River basin. The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, constituting 52% of the population, [1] or about 11.1 million people.
Mossi, people of Burkina Faso and other parts of West Africa, especially Mali and Togo. They numbered some six million at the start of the 21st century. Their language, Moore, belongs to the Gur branch and is akin to that spoken by the Mamprusi and Dagomba of northern Ghana, from whom the Mossi.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 25, 2011 · Learn about the Mossi, the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, and their history, language, values, and traditions. Discover how they preserve their identity and culture despite external influences and changes.
- Introduction
- Location and Homeland
- Language
- Folklore
- Religion
- Major Holidays
- Rites of Passage
- Interpersonal Relations
- Living Conditions
- Family Life
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The Mossi make up the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso. Because of extensive migration to more prosperous neighboring countries, Mossi also are the second-largest ethnic group in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The Mossi occupied the interior lands within the “boucle de Niger”(“great loop of the Niger River”) and thus controlled trade between the ...
The Mossi homeland is the central portion of Burkina Faso, known until 1984 as Upper Volta for its location on the three branches of what in Ghana becomes the Volta River. Because the Mossi were the dominant people in the region before and during colonial rule, their population statistics in relation to the modern nation have been affected by polit...
The Mossi language is Moré. It is a language of the Gur group within the larger Niger-Congo language family. Like many African languages, Moré uses tones (differences in pitch) as well as individual sounds to distinguish meanings; also, like many African and African-influenced languages, it indicates both tense and “aspect.” That is, a verb indicat...
While there have always been some Mossi who were Muslim and literate in Arabic, in general there were no written records in Mossi society. Specialist praise singers, usually called griotsacross the West African savanna, were the keepers of royal traditions and genealogies, but the entire society relied upon folk-tales and proverbs to concentrate wi...
The Mossi are like many African peoples in having traditionally had a religion with three main components. There is a belief in an all-powerful creator, Wende, usually discussed as Wennam, “God's power.” Nam is the power ritually granted to a nabato rule over humans. While Wende is all-powerful, he is also very distant and not concerned with the da...
The Basega festival comes in December, after the millet crop has been harvested. It is a festival of thanksgiving, thanking the ancestors for their part in bringing in a successful harvest and asking their aid with the coming year's crops. It is a family-based ritual even though it takes place in a political context. That is, a family cannot sacrif...
From birth until death (and, indeed, after death, in the ceremonies honoring ancestors), major transitions in a person's life are marked with formal rites of passage. In much of Africa, the number three is associated with males and four with females. A Mossi baby is formally presented to the community three days after birth for a boy and after four...
Mossi greetings are very elaborate, more so than in most African societies. The persons greeting each other shake hands while each asks how the other is. The questions extend to how each other's wives are, and their children, and their cows, and sheep, and so on. A full Mossi greeting of an honored elder can take half an hour. While the greeting is...
The Mossi live in villages of extended families. The village boundaries may be streams or other natural features, but in general the village is a social unit more than a geographical one. This is because houses are 75 to 100 yards apart and surrounded by fields, so that when the main crop, millet, is fully grown to 10 to 12 feet in height, the hous...
As noted above, traditional Mossi villages are groups of households surrounded by fields, where men related to each other through their fathers live with their wives and children. Because the incest taboo means that a man must marry a woman from another family, women ordinarily live in a village other than the one where they grew up, in a household...
The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso and the second-largest in Côte d'Ivoire. They have a history of resisting Islam and a political system based on religious power and hereditary kingship.
The Mossi Kingdoms, sometimes referred to as the Mossi Empire, were a group of powerful kingdoms in modern-day Burkina Faso which dominated the region of the upper Volta river for hundreds of years. The largest Mossi kingdoms was that of Ouagadougou and the king of Ouagadougou known as the Mogho Naaba, or King of All the World, serves as the ...
- Prehistoricc. 3rd-13th century
- c. 1710-1898
- 1919-19321947-1958
- c. 11th century-1896
Sep 30, 2018 · Learn about the history, culture, religion and politics of the Mossi people, a group of twenty states and kingdoms in West Africa that lasted from the 11th to the 19th century. Discover their language, clothing, literature, trade, family and livelihood in this article.
Map of Burkina Faso; the Mossi primarily in the pink area. The Mossi are a Gur ethnic group native to modern Burkina Faso, primarily the Volta River basin. The Mossi are the largest ethnic group in Burkina Faso, constituting 52% of the population, or about 11.1 million people.
