Kuru Masaba

Kuru Masaba is the Supreme Being of the Temne of Sierra Leone, whose name joins kuru, God or sky, to a word borrowed from Mandinka meaning the big king. The Temne hold that he cannot be approached directly, only through patrilineal ancestors, to whom sacrifices are made; other spirits, some kindly and some mischievous, are given offerings too.

The Poro, Ragbenle and Bondo secret societies, brought by the Mandé, initiated boys and girls. The Temne, who say they came from Futa Jallon, were conquered by a Mandé army, the Mane, in the mid-1500s. Portuguese accounts of 1505—1508 describe them as worshippers of clay idols; Islam spread among them in the 1700s and 1800s, almost completely in the north.