Mahafaly

The Mahafaly are a Malagasy people of southwestern Madagascar, whose name is usually read as those who make holy. Their ancestors are thought to have reached the island from southeastern Africa around the twelfth century, mixing with the Austronesian population there. They raised massive tombs for dead kings.

In the 1500s the Maroserana noble Olembetsitoto subdued chiefly families and founded a polity; when he withdrew into seclusion his followers held him to have become holy, making his land and people maha-faly. In June 1649 Mahafaly envoys travelled to the French post at Fort Dauphin to hire musketeers against Masikoro raiders who had taken the royal cattle.

From about 1650 the kingdom fragmented into several kingdoms. The Mahafaly kingdoms never submitted to the Merina, and royal funerary ritual included the posthumous renaming of kings and the obligatory shaving of mourners.