Antemoro (Antemuru)

The Antemoro (Antemuru) are a people of some 85,000 settled agriculturalists in the low river valleys of Madagascar, from the Matatana in the south to the Namurana in the north, who live partly by fishing. About 25,000 of them, in certain clans, claim descent from Emaka, a region they liken to Mecca. ¹

According to their written traditions, Muslims passing through the Comoros and north-east Madagascar in the seventh/thirteenth century settled among the peoples there and were absorbed by them, and an Indonesian community was reinforced by Islamised groups, some of them descended from immigrants from the Persian Gulf. Two waves of immigrants are distinguished: the earlier brought geomantic divination, and the Antalaotra of the later brought Arabic writing and paper-making. They also introduced plants such as the vine and pomegranate, chess, a few prayers, a period of fasting and some Arabic words, above all a calendar. ²

Since the tenth/sixteenth century the Antemoro magicians extended their influence throughout Madagascar, and the occult sciences replaced the Islamic tradition: the astrological calendar replaced the lunar one, and prayers became magic formulas whose meaning was forgotten. Since the nineteenth century overpopulation drove migration to the north-west, where since 1913, especially 1926-1939, an Islamic revival took place among some literate members of the Antalaotra clans; after 1924 coffee-planting checked the migration, and the revival faded. ³