Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

325 Pages·2010·2.808 MB·English

by  Anne Haour, Benedetta Rossi

Being and Becoming Hausa
African Social Studies Series
Editorial Board
Martin R. Doornbos, Institute of Social Studies the Hague
Carola Lentz, University of Mainz
John Lonsdale, University of Cambridge
VOLUME 23
Being and Becoming Hausa
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by
Anne Haour and Benedetta Rossi
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
Cover: Photograph by David Heathcote.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Being and becoming Hausa : interdisciplinary perspectives / edited by
Anne Haour and Benedetta Rossi.
p. cm. — (African social studies series ; v. 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18542-5 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Hausa (African people)—Ethnic identity. I. Haour, Anne. II. Rossi, Benedetta.
III. Title. IV. Series.
DT515.45.H38B44 2010
305.89’37—dc22
2010013403
ISSN 1568-1203
ISBN 978 90 04 18542 5
Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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printed in the netherlands
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ............................................................................ vii
List of Maps ........................................................................................ ix
Contributors ....................................................................................... xi
Preface ................................................................................................. xv
Note on Language and Transcription ............................................ xvii
1. Hausa Identity: Language, History and Religion .................... 1
Anne Haour and Benedetta Rossi
2. The Role of Comparative/Historical Linguistics in
Reconstructing the Past: What Borrowed and Inherited
Words Tell Us About the Early History of Hausa ................. 35
Philip J. Jaggar
3. Ancient Labels and Categories: Exploring the ‘Onomastics’
of Kano ........................................................................................... 59
Murray Last
4. More Rural than Urban? The Religious Content and
Functions of Hausa Proverbs and Hausa Verbal
Compounds ................................................................................... 85
Joseph McIntyre
5. Being and Becoming Hausa in Ader ......................................... 113
Benedetta Rossi
6. Kufan Kanawa, Niger: The Former Kano? ............................... 141
Anne Haour
7. Kirfi, Bauchi: An Archaeological Investigation of the Hausa
Landscape ....................................................................................... 165
Abubakar Sule Sani
8. The Hausa Textile Industry: Origins and Development
in the Precolonial Period ............................................................ 187
Marisa Candotti
vi contents
9. Clothing and Identity: How Can Museum Collections of
Hausa Textiles Contribute to Understanding the Notion
of Hausa Identity? ...................................................................... 213
Sarah Worden
10. God Made Me a Rapper: Young Men, Islam, and Survival
in an Age of Austerity ............................................................... 235
Adeline Masquelier
11. Engendering a Hausa Vernacular Christian Practice .......... 257
Barbara Cooper
12. Hausa as a Process in Time and Space .................................. 279
John E.G. Sutton
Index .................................................................................................... 299
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover: Girl in front of a Zaria mosque, in the 1970s. Photograph taken
by David Heathcote.
Figure 2.3. Diachronic semantic drift: ‘arrow’ in Hausa and Bole
Figure 3.1. The formerly Maguzawa house, Gidan Jatau, Kankara
District (Katsina): looking south from its now-disused mbagiro shrine
over the millet (gero) and sorghum (dawa) fields towards the farm-
stead and its trees.
Figure 3.2. Within Birnin Kano in 1964, an old house beyond a
borrow-pit (kududdufi) in which in the nineteenth century were
crocodiles.
Figure 5.1. Ader landscape with village, April 2005.
Figure 5.2. Movements of groups discussed in text during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries.
Figure 5.3. Shrine of Mashidi, December 2008.
Figure 5.4. Remains of furnace and tuyères on the plateau SE of Ago-
uloum, December 2008 (the scale shown is 1 metre long). Photo cour-
tesy of Joël le Corre.
Figure 6.2. Site of Kufan Kanawa. January 2003.
Figure 6.3. Serkin Tsotsebaki (at left) in front of his palace, Wacha,
with a guard. Early 2002.
Figure 6.4. Folded strip-rouletted vessel, recovered from 2000 excava-
tions, Context C, and reconstituted by Maifada Ganda. Inset: detail of
folded strip rouletting motif (Sherd KME E344).
Figure 7.2. Site of Tekkira: remains of Furnace 5, with slag heap 4
(including visible tuyère fragments) at background.
Figure 7.3. Abandoned house structures on the hilltop settlement of
Kal-bokko
viii list of illustrations
Figure 8.1. Map of trade routes, northern Nigeria. The National
Archives, London, CO 446/51, 1905. Reproduced with permission.
Figure 9.1. Group of riders, Sallah procession, Kano City, February
2002 (© Sarah Worden).
Figure 9.2. Detail of White robe riga fari (© National Museums
Liverpool). Taken by the author, with special permission to publish by
National Museums Liverpool.
Figure 9.3. A.1878.1.2 Indigo robe riga saki with Eight Knives design
(© National Museums Scotland) NMS photographic Ref. PF17154.
Figure 9.4. A.2007.125 Silk robe girke barage (© National Museums
Scotland) NMS Ref. PF17167.
Figure 10.1. Male youths in their best hip-hop gear attending a dance
party in Dogondoutchi.
Figure 11.1. The congregation of the newly constructed church in Tsi-
biri ca. 1948. (Note the Islamic style of the church architecture and the
local dress style typical of Muslim Hausa speakers in the region of the
congregants). Photo by Ray de la Haye, courtesy of SIM International
Archives.
LIST OF MAPS
Map 1.1. Map: the Hausa area.
Map 2.1. The Chadic languages (Schuh 2002).
Map 2.2. The area of greatest linguistic diversity in Afroasiatic: the
Cushitic and Omotic families (Ethnologue).
Map 3.1. Kano and its neighbours, showing the location of some key
early sites.
Map 3.2. The districts of Kano emirate, divided into the zones used
in this chapter.
Map 6.1. Map of sites discussed in text.
Map 7.1. Map of the study area. Map drawn by Abubakar Sani Sule
and redrawn by Mr Joshua Bako, cartographer of the Department of
Archaeology, Ahmadu Bello University.