Clans

After presenting material on clans and sections, praise names, and clan and section origins in tabular form, we show how the interrelationships of clans and sections indicate a system in permanent flux. Clan histories are treated and a synthesis attempted on a separate page connected to each clan and group name in the table below by hyperlinks.

It is to be noted that with regard to origins, a higher proportion of clans now claim to have come from Gudur than was apparently the case in the early 1930s. Whether this is due to differences in data collection by observers or to a widening of the desire to attach one’s ancestors to that prestigious magico-religious center is uncertain, but we suspect the latter.

Clan sections: evidence of a system in flux

In talking to Sukur about clanship three phrases are regularly repeated. Clans are exogamous and thus men of different clans “marry each others’ daughters”. The levirate is practiced within the clan, which is to say that if a man dies and his widow is willing, his brother – and potentially any clan brother – inherits his house and with it the responsibility for looking after his wife or wives and young children. Thus clan brothers “inherit each others’ houses”. Sukur differentiate between primary marriages, usually celebrated with considerable ceremony and never entirely dissolved, and secondary marriages that are both entered into and sometimes ended with little formality. (A woman’s first marriage is her primary marriage; men can have more than one primary marriage partner.) A clan brother would never marry a woman whose primary marriage was with a clan brother so long as he was alive, nor can he marry a woman living in secondary marriage with a clan brother. (She would first have to leave her partner, marry a man of a different clan and then leave him.) Men of different clans are not subject to such restraints; they “marry each others’ wives”.

Such are the norms, but as the table below indicates there is in fact considerable variation.

The sections of the Təvwa clan marry each other’s daughters but in other ways behave as if they were the same clan. Perhaps the latitude allowed in seeking marriage partners can be attributed to the small numbers of smith/potters and the prohibition, now just beginning to weaken, against marriage between the smith/potter and farmer castes. A different pattern characterizes the Mədləŋ sections which behave as a single clan except in the matter of the levirate; they claim not to “inherit each others’ houses”. The reason for this is obscure and may in fact express what has happened rather than what should happen; if indeed there is a norm it may be connected with the possible smith/potter status of the ancestor of the ləiwaɗ section. Gadə and Ka-Ozha have the same pattern of behaviors but have different praise names. The Manjam, by which name the Ka-Ozha are known to many Sukur, take that name from a neighborhood in Guzka ward where they once lived. They are members of a trans-ethnic descent group that extends to Wula Kushiri where they retain the designation Ka-Ozha, the clan of the Tluwala rain maker. Although closely associated with Gadə, they have separate histories and titles, and it is clear that since they do not “inherit each others’ houses” and have different praise names the two kin groups are not (as yet?) fully integrated as a clan.