7 One Who Knows
1. This distinction, too, is hardly unambiguous; the term mory may also be used to refer specifically to the learned. Among the Mende of Sierra Leone, "morimen" are specialists in written Islamic magic, whereas " karamokos " specialize in the teaching of Arabic (Bledsoe and Robey 1986). Plausibly, the terms mory and karamogo were originally synonymous; through a process of semantic displacement, the distinction has acquired different shades of meaning in different local contexts. [BACK]
2. Both siru and bayani are almost certainly borrowed from Arabic, but their specific derivations are open to question. J. R. Goody (1968: 236) derives the Hausa and Gonja equivalents of siru from the Arabic sihr , "magic" (cf. Eickelman 1985: 67). However, John Hunwick (personal communication) has suggested that these terms might derive from sirr , "secret," and bayan , "clear, evident," a term also associated with public speaking (Holden 1966, cited in Goody 1968: 224). Either derivation of siru is intrinsically plausible. Conceivably, the Dyula term collapses the meanings of both Arabic words. [BACK]
3. I use the term laymen with considerable reservations to refer to individuals who are neither enturbaned scholars nor pursuing an advanced course of study that could eventually qualify them for the turban. It must be stressed that Muslim scholars are not the equivalent of the clergy in Christianity, as the use of the term layman might imply. Indeed, the Dyula have no word or expression to denote nonscholars. [BACK]
4. The few exceptions are all young, unmarried, or very recently married men, who may yet choose to pursue their studies elsewhere if they are serious aspirants to the scholarly profession. The most advanced of these young men was in any case studying with his own father. [BACK]
5. They are always given on a Thursday or Saturday night, technically "Friday" or "Sunday," holy and propitious days; nights are reckoned as parts of the following rather than the preceding day. [BACK]
6. On the similar "ossiffication" of the khutba in early modern Egypt, see Gaffney 1987: 202. [BACK]
7. It is perhaps relevant that this particular scholar happened to be a worosso , a person of slave status with license to joke obscenely (see Launay 1977a). Though the joke was not, strictly speaking, obscene, it might be considered too coarse for a scholar of "free" status. But it must be stressed that such "free" scholars, although they must avoid coarseness or excessive buffoonery lest they appear undignified, are by no means averse to using humor as a rhetorical device. [BACK]