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866 YALUNKA
. Habitation Among the Yakan, a Muslim People in the Southern Philippines.
Monographical Series, Vol. 30. Copenhagen: Scandinavian Institute of Asian
Studies, 1976.
. "The Yakan Maulud Celebration." In Studies in Philippine Anthropology in
Honor of H. Otley Beyer, edited by Mario D. Zamora. Quezon City: Alemar
Phoenix, 1967.
Articles
Dapitan, Pilar P. "The Yakans of Basilan City." Southeast Asia Quarterly 5:2 (1970):
1-6.
Frake, Charles O. "How to Enter a Yakan House." Sulu Studies 3 (1975): 87-104.
Norbeck, Edward. "David Barrows' Notes on Philippine Ethnology: Yakan Rice Planting
Ceremony." Journal of East Asiatic Studies 5:3 (1956): 252-253.
Wulff, Inger. "Bulan Sapal—A Month of Misfortune: Concepts and Rituals Among the
Yakan of Basilan, Southern Philippines.'' Folk (Copenhagen) 16-17(1974—1975):
381-400.
. "Burial Customs Among the Yakan, a Muslim People in the Southern Philippines."
Folk (Copenhagen) 4 (1962): 111-122.
. "The Yakan Graduation Ceremony." Folk (Copenhagen) 5 (1963): 325-332.
. "The Yakan Imam." Folk (Copenhagen) 8-9 (1966-1967): 355-371.
. "The Yakan of Basilan." Silliman Journal 18:4 (1971): 436-440.
. "The Yakan Rice Planting Ceremony." Folk (Copenhagen) 18 (1976): 237-
245.
Inger Wulff
Population figures updated by Richard V. Weekes
YALUNKA The name "Yalunka" is interpreted by the Yalunka themselves
to mean "people of the Yalun." This means that they consider themselves to
be the original inhabitants of the Futa Jalon plateau in West Africa. The Yalunka
(Dialonke, Djalonke, Dyalonke, Jallonke, Jalunka) described here live in the
northeastern corner of Sierra Leone and portions of the Republic of Guinea.
The earliest European reference to the Yalunka occurs around 1507 in the
form "Jaalunquas," Later references make it clear that the name was long a
general one for the original Manding-speaking inhabitants of the Futa Jalon
region. Various versions of the name are still applied to the descendants of these
peoples, who, as a result of extreme pressure from the Fulani (Fulbe) immigrants
into the Futa, migrated to their current locations in the seventeenth century,
establishing a group of independent polities, the best known of which is Solima,
whose capital was at Falaba in present-day Sierra Leone. Thus there are other
groups called Yalunka in the western savanna region of West Africa whose exact
relationship with the Sierra Leone-Guinea Yalunka is not known.
The Yalunka number in excess of 85,000, about 90 percent of whom are
Sunni Muslims. Their language belongs to the northern subgroup of Manding
and is closely related to Soso (see Manding-speaking Peoples; Soso).
Knowledge of the pre-twentieth-century history of the Yalunka is sketchy.