StapleMadagascar
Vary sy Laoka
Rice with an accompaniment, which is how Malagasy people describe a meal. Madagascar eats more rice per head than almost anywhere on earth, three times a day.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Antaimoro
The people of the sacred manuscripts — a south-eastern coastal group descended in part from Muslim settlers, keepers of the sorabe books written in Malagasy in Arabic script, and makers of the paper those books are written on.
Antaimoro people
Papier antaimoro.jpg · Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: Around 500,000 in south-eastern Madagascar
Location: The Matitanana river region around Vohipeno and Manakara on the south-east coast
Language: Malagasy (Antaimoro dialect), with an Arabic-derived vocabulary in ritual and calendrical use
Language family: Austronesian → Malayo-Polynesian → Malagasy
Traditional governance: Ranked clans with the Anteony as the highest and the Antalaotra as the scribal and ritual lineage; village and clan councils; Malagasy communal administration today.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Anteony
The senior noble clan, from whom rulers were drawn.
Antalaotra (Katibo)
The scribal lineages who hold and copy the sorabe manuscripts.
Ampanabaka and others
Commoner clans forming the majority of the population.
Gallery
1 images
Culture
Clothing: Lamba wraps and cotton; scribes' dress marking their office; women's headwraps and silver.
Food: Rice from the coastal plain, cassava, fish, coffee and vanilla from the eastern slopes; the region is agriculturally rich and economically poor.
Ceremonies: Consultation of the sorabe for divination, healing and calendar; circumcision ceremonies; the sandratra and other clan rites; funerals with ancestral consultation.
Marriage customs: Clan rank governs marriage closely, with the scribal and noble lineages maintaining endogamy; bridewealth negotiated between lineages.
Initiation rites: Instruction in reading and copying the sorabe for those of scribal lineage, an apprenticeship of years; circumcision with public celebration for all boys.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Madagascar, at national rather than community level — 9 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
National dishMadagascar
Romazava
Beef broth with brèdes mafana, a leaf that numbs and tingles the mouth. Madagascar's national dish, once reserved for royalty, and unlike anything else in the region.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
National dishMadagascar
Akoho sy Voanio
also Chicken in coconut
Chicken braised in coconut milk with ginger and tomato, the coastal Malagasy counterpart to the highland romazava, and the dish most often cooked for guests.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 15 minutes
Street foodMadagascar
Mofo Gasy
Sweet rice-flour cakes cooked in a dimpled iron pan over charcoal, sold at dawn from street carts and eaten with coffee on the way to work.
Serves Makes 16 · 2 hours
Street foodMadagascar
Koba Ravina
also Koba, Peanut rice cake
Ground peanuts, rice flour and sugar wrapped in banana leaf and steamed for hours into a dense sweet log, cut into slices and sold on every Malagasy roadside.
Serves 10 · 5 hours
Festival & feastMadagascar
Ravitoto sy Henakisoa
Pounded cassava leaves cooked with pork and coconut milk, made for family Sundays and celebrations. Pounding the leaves by hand is the whole difference between good and indifferent.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 45 minutes
Regional specialityMadagascar
Lasary
A sharp salad of tomato, onion and green mango dressed with lime and ginger, served alongside every rich dish. The Malagasy answer to a plate that needs cutting through.
Serves 6 · 20 minutes
Regional specialityMadagascar
Sakay
also Malagasy chilli paste
A fiery paste of bird's eye chilli, ginger and garlic in oil, kept on every Malagasy table and added by the teaspoon to everything.
Serves Makes about 250ml · 20 minutes
Drink & sweetMadagascar
Ranovola
also Ranon'ampango
Water boiled in the pot with the toasted rice crust left in the bottom, producing a smoky drink served with every meal. Nothing is wasted and nothing else is needed.
Serves 4 · 10 minutes
Stories & Oral Literature
The SorabeManuscript tradition
Sorabe are manuscripts in the Malagasy language written in Arabic script, on locally made paper, covering astrology, divination, medicine, genealogy and history. They descend from Muslim settlers who arrived on the south-east coast around the fifteenth century. The books are kept wrapped, handled under prohibition, and consulted by scribal specialists; several hundred survive in family hands and in libraries.
Paper from the Avoha BushCraft
Antaimoro paper is made by beating the bark of the avoha shrub into pulp, spreading it on cloth frames and pressing flowers into the drying sheet. It was developed to carry the sorabe and is now made commercially for the tourist and stationery trade — one of the few African papermaking traditions, sustained by a religious purpose long before it had a market.
Proverbs
“The book knows what the elder forgot.”
Writing as memory in an oral world.
“Paper is made from the bark and the flower.”
Beauty and utility together.
“A name written is a name that argues.”
Genealogy in manuscript as a claim.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Zanahary and the razana as across Madagascar, with an Islamic overlay in the sorabe's cosmology, calendar and divination system.
Beliefs: Ancestral religion with the razana central; sikidy divination and its Arabic-derived astrological system; residual Islamic vocabulary and practice without contemporary Islamic observance; Christianity present.
Ancestors: Genealogies recorded in the sorabe are the basis of clan rank; ancestral consultation is mediated by the scribal lineages.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Zanahary
The creator
Razana
The ancestors, consulted through divination and the manuscripts
The sorabe
Not divine, but treated as sacred objects with their own prohibitions
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of timber and reed houses on the coastal plain and river terraces; scribal houses where manuscripts are kept under prohibition.
Building techniques: Timber, reed and palm construction; papermaking frames and beating stones; manuscript binding and wrapping.
Village layout: Village along the river or road; the manuscript house apart and restricted; rice fields on the plain.
Artifacts
Sorabe manuscripts
Manuscript
Malagasy texts in Arabic script on astrology, medicine and genealogy.
Antaimoro paper
Craft
Bark paper with pressed flowers, made for the manuscripts and now commercially.
Sikidy divination equipment
Ritual
Seeds and boards of the Arabic-derived divination system.
Manuscript wrappings
Ritual
Cloths and containers governing how the books may be handled.
Historical Timeline
c. 1400s
Muslim settlers arrive on the south-east coast, bringing Arabic script and calendrical knowledge.
1500s–1800s
Antaimoro clans consolidate; sorabe manuscripts are copied and accumulated.
1800s
Merina expansion reaches the south-east; Antaimoro scribes serve highland courts as diviners.
1896–1960
French rule; manuscripts are collected by scholars and partly removed to Europe.
Present
Sorabe remain in family and institutional hands; Antaimoro paper is made commercially.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: Madagascar — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
- Bibliothèque nationale de France Malagasy collectionsBnF
Premium & scholarly sources