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Chapter 3 Islamic Rule in Cotabato
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From Heterarchy to Hierarchy:The Decline of Local Descent Groups

Pre-Islamic Magindanaon social organization consisted of a number of localized cognatic descent groups, or bangsa ,[8] that were associated with particular autonomous or semiautonomous ingeds, or localities.


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The Magindanaon bangsa were most likely similar to those of the Maranao, the neighboring Muslim ethnolinguistic group of the Lanao Plateau. As described by Mednick (1965), membership in a Maranao bangsa provided access to rights in a specified area—most importantly, usufruct rights in land, or the right to exploit a certain natural resource—as a result of an ancestral association.

In pre-Islamic Cotabato, these large, localized descent groups produced chiefs who, under certain conditions, were able to extend their power beyond their own bangsa and become chieftains or, in exceptional cases, rulers of harbor principalities. With the coming of Islam, however, the bangsa were crosscut, and eventually attenuated, by a separate, societywide aristocracy whose members claimed descent from a common ancestor, Sarip Kabungsuwan, an émigré nobleman. With the establishment of the Cotabato sultanates,[9] local chieftains became principally interested in establishing the maximum number of descent links to Sarip Kabungsuwan, the prime ancestor. Their new status aspiration was to establish their rank positions in respect to the paramount rulers of the sultanates, who ruled by right of their membership in the aristocratic lineage (barabangsa ) founded by Kabungsuwan. With increased status delineation and relative political centralization, the significance of local ancestors and the power of local corporate descent groups were greatly diminished. While local identity remained strong, local ancestry retained only secondary importance as a criterion for local rule.[10]

Magindanaon bangsa survived as tupus , or local descent lines. Informants report the existence of forty-two Magindanaon tupus, although none could name more than twenty of them.[11] It appears likely that while localities (ingeds) remained largely independent entities under the sultanates, local descent lines gradually lost both depth and meaning. The descent line of Sarip Kabungsuwan, the point of reference for ruling datus, became not only the paramount descent line but the only significant one. Tupus seem to have been insubstantial categories that did little more than focus loyalty to place. Bilateral kindreds replaced bangsa as the largest effective kinship units for ordinary Muslims.


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Chapter 3 Islamic Rule in Cotabato
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