L'État géomètre : les leydi des Peul du Fuuta Tooro (Sénégal) et du Maasina (Mali).

J. Schmitz-—The State as Surveyor: The Fulani's leydi in Fuuta Tooro (Senegal) and Maasina (Mali). The Haalpulaar in the Senegal valley and the Fulani in the Niger inland delta use the same word, leydi, for their minimal territorial unit. The two groups have gone through often parallels destinies, especially on the advent of Moslem States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, while the Haalpulaar built an integrated society where ethnie references were superseded by status distinctions, in Maasina the various population strata kept their autonomy. Hence the territorial organization in the latter zone bears the mark of pastoral hegemony, while in Fuuta Tooro husbandsmen's and fishermen's territories are coterminal since neither did succeed in enforcing an exclusive network; likewise every freemen's group is represented at the level of the micro-State which governs the leydi. One may wonder why no account of such fonction al realities is taken in the preliminary studies of hydraulic and agricultural developments in Senegal.