Tabera

Tabera (Kirobyi, 'impartiality, justice') was a social movement in southern Bahia in the 18th to 19th centuries. It advocated the establishment of institutions and conventions, as well as reforms of customs and tradition, that would bring justice and right, ubutabera, to Bahian society. Emerging in the context of the Zombibudi Wars, the Taberists were especially opposed to the chaos seen as caused by Zombibudi sodalities. They regarded their own work as amounting to the restoration of the Bahian Golden Age and even exercising jamhediboga. Lourale learning and recently-introduced Euclean literature both influenced Taberist ideas. The movement was multi-confessional, drawing followers from adherents of Irfan, fetishism, Badi, and Sotirianity, although its community was often spoken of in terms that made it equal to the other religious affiliations.

The core of Tabera lay with intellectual adherents who established themselves as adjudicators practicing new procedural laws, formulated by a smaller body of jurists drawn mainly from respected judges and scholars recognized by consensus. Several works of Taberist jurisprudence and procedure were produced, though they were always applied with considerable flexibility, and the underlying principles of rational impartiality and respect of rights came first. Substantive law, on the other hand, was much more varied, usually mixing Euclean and Irfanic codes, local custom, and the judge's own opinion. By virtue of these responsibilities and their own organization, Taberists also assumed leadership of local communities, and a place in the administrative hierarchy of hourege states (though their status in it was never uniformly recognized).

Taberists first organized into 'judge-knights' to establish and defend communities according to their ideas during the Zombibudi Wars. Later, in the 1750s, they were co-opted by the Tuldeyuri dynasty that restored the houragic hegemony of Kambou to govern the southern Ouloume regions of former Dovoba, although they held sway in a much larger area, and often came into conflict with local houregic authorities. By the time of the Fatougole they became highly Euclophile from the respect of Euclean ideas, and resistance from authorities associated with native traditions; judges cooperated with Euclean colonial authorities, and Taberist communities promoted cultural Eucleanisation and Sotirianity. However, changes made under colonial rule, and the emergence of more distinctly Irfanic or fetishist resistance in response, drove Taberist judges to a difficult, marginal position where their ideas and authority lost considerable reach, and their culture became regarded as a mere stepping stone for Euclean civilization. Having become associated exclusively with Sotirians and Barobyi southerners by the 1880s, the upheaval of the Sougoulie and the ensuing colonial laws ended the meaningful practice of Tabera, though Taberist families remained a distinct demographic and class into the 20th century.