Kooliny Diabune
Jola · mortal · Jola traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kooliny Diabune is remembered as one of the pre-colonial prophets of the Jola-Esulalu, a group on the south bank of the Casamance river. Active during the height of the Atlantic slave trade, he was among roughly fifteen known male figures who claimed direct revelation from the supreme being Emitai and who introduced or reformed spirit-shrines to steady a society under strain from slave raiding and commerce. His career belongs to the earlier, exclusively male phase of the Diola prophetic tradition that later, under colonial pressure, gave way to a succession of women prophets. He stands with Alandisso Bassène and Alinesitoué Diatta as one of the three prophets whose lives anchor the documented history of Diola prophecy.
Domains
- prophecy
- community law
Powers
- receives revelation directly from Emitai
- establishes new spirit-shrines by revelation
Sources
- Kooliny Diabune was a pre-colonial Jola-Esulalu male prophet active during the height of the Atlantic slave trade, one of roughly fifteen known male prophets who claimed revelation from Emitai before colonial conquest.: Robert M. Baum, West Africa's Women of God (Indiana University Press, 2016) (secondary); Robert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia (Oxford University Press, 1999) (secondary)