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12 unusual facts about Maurice Delafosse


Afroasiatic languages

The term "Afroasiatic" (often now spelled as "Afro-Asiatic") was later coined by Maurice Delafosse (1914).

Delafosse

Maurice Delafosse (1870–1926), French ethnographer and colonial official

François Joseph Clozel

Interested in understanding the region, he took an active part in developing French scientific research in West Africa in collaboration with the anthropologist Maurice Delafosse.

Ghana Empire

French colonial officials, notably Maurice Delafosse, concluded that Ghana had been founded by the Berbers, a nomadic group origination from the Benu River, from Middle Africa, and linked them to North African and Middle Eastern origins.

International African Institute

Frederick Lugard was the first chairman (1926 to his death in 1945); Diedrich Hermann Westermann (1926 to 1939) and Maurice Delafosse (1926) were the initial co-directors.

Joost van Vollenhoven

Van Vollenhoven's assistant, Maurice Delafosse and Robert Delavignette, (who was to later become High Commissioner of French Cameroon) inspired some of the most proficient administrative dissidents pushing for French decolonisation.

Koumbi Saleh

In the French translation of the Tarikh al-fattash published in 1913, Octave Houdas and Maurice Delafosse include a footnote in which they comment that local tradition also suggested that the first capital of Kayamagna was at Koumbi and that the town was in the Ouagadougou region, northeast of Goumbou on the road leading from Goumbou to Néma and Oualata.

Mande languages

In 1901 Maurice Delafosse made a distinction of two groups in his Essai de manuel pratique de la langue mandé ou mandingue.

Songhay languages

Diedrich Hermann Westermann, a missionary and linguist, hesitated between assigning it to Gur or considering it an isolate, and Maurice Delafosse grouped it with Mande.

Sundiata Keita

Delafosse, Maurice Haut-Sénégal-Niger: Le Pays, les Peuples, les Langues; l'Histoire; les Civilizations. vols.

Timeline of Serer history

Delafosse, Maurice, "Haut-Sénégal-Niger: Le Pays, les Peuples, les Langues"; "l'Histoire"; "les Civilizations".

Toubab

Maurice Delafosse, « De l'origine du mot Toubab » in Annuaire et mémoires du comité d'études historiques et scientifiques de l'A.O.F., 1917, p.