A Note on the Ethnic Interpretation of the Fulani Jihād

Africa ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-291
Author(s):  
Marilyn Robinson Waldman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
City States ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe religious government and society of contemporary Northern Nigeria have their historical roots in a jihād (Muslim holy war) which was waged there in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The leader of thai jihād, Usuman dan Fodio, sought to establish a Muslim form of government over the Hausa city-states of what is now Northern Nigeria; his movement had the effect of replacing most of the nonorthodox, and in some cases non-Muslim, Hausa rulers with orthodox Muslims who, like himself, were Fulani.

A Study of Hausa Domestic Economy in Northern Zaria

Africa ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Linguistic Term ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
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Cultural Connotations

Opening ParagraphHausa is primarily a linguistic term but it has definite cultural connotations and refers to the Hausa-speaking Muslim populations of Northern Nigeria and adjoining French territories, who are typically organized in large centralized states. Such a definition excludes the pagan Maguzawa, whose native speech is also Hausa, and it ignores ethnic differences between the indigenous Habe, who were conquered by Fulani in the ‘Holy War’ of 1804-10, the settled Fulani, who now form the ruling group in most of the states, and the large assimilated populations of slave origin in Hausa communities.

Gerontocratic Government: Age-Sets in Pre-Colonial Giriama

Africa ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Brantley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Previous Experience ◽  
Secret Society ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
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Difficult Situations ◽  
Southward Migration

Opening ParagraphIn the protection of their kaya home deep in the forest of the Mombasa hinterland, the Giriama of Kenya developed a non-centralized government based on a council of elders (kambi), and derived from age-sets. They were supported by a special secret society within the kambi whose oath and select membership were used to maintain order and determine guilt in difficult situations. In the period from approximately 1700 until sometime in the nineteenth century, the Giriama developed this form of government by drawing upon their previous experience of life in Singwaya and subsequent southward migration, upon their identification or assimilation of members into six original clans, and upon their unique environment of the kaya neighborhood to become successful cultivators, keeping cattle when circumstances allowed and emerging as the prominent traders of the Mombasa hinterland.

The Ta'līf akhbār al-qurūn min umarā' bilad Ilūrin: A Critique

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
H.O. Danmole
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Unpublished Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Ibadan ◽  
Local Languages

Before the advent of colonialism, Arabic was widely used in northern Nigeria where Islam had penetrated before the fifteenth century. The jihād of the early nineteenth century in Hausaland led to the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate, the revitalization of Islamic learning, and scholars who kept records in Arabic. Indeed, some local languages such as Hausa and Fulfulde were reduced to writing in Arabic scripts. Consequently, knowledge of Arabic is a crucial tool for the historian working on the history of the caliphate.For Ilorin, a frontier emirate between Hausa and Yorubaland, a few Arabic materials are available as well for the reconstruction of the history of the emirate. One such document is the Ta'līf akhbār al-qurūn min umarā' bilad Ilūrin (“The History of the Emirs of Ilorin”). In 1965 Martin translated, edited, and published the Ta'līf in the Research Bulletin of the Centre for Arabic Documentation at the University of Ibadan as a “New Arabic History of Ilorin.” Since then many scholars have used the Ta'līf in their studies of Ilorin and Yoruba history. Recently Smith has affirmed that the Ta'līf has been relatively neglected. He attempts successfully to reconstruct the chronology of events in Yorubaland, using the Ta'līf along with the Ta'nis al-ahibba' fi dhikr unara' Gwandu mawa al-asfiya', an unpublished work of Dr. Junaid al-Bukhari, Wazīr of Sokoto, and works in English. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the information in the Ta'līf by comparing its evidence with that of other primary sources which deal with the history of Ilorin and Yorubaland.

Event and Portent: the Fall of Old Oyo, a Problem in Historical Explanation

Africa ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Main Issue ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
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Opening ParagraphExplanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.

The socio-ecology of firewood and charcoal on the Freetown peninsula

Africa ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 457-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Akindele Cline-Cole
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Wood Fuel ◽  
Western Area ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Political Economic

Opening ParagraphIn a country which in the last 200 years has undergone continuous and often momentous political, economic and social changes, few things are capable of conveying as strong an impression of stability and changelessness as wood fuel (charcoal and firewood) consumption and production; and nowhere is this more striking than on the Freetown or Western Area (formerly Colony) peninsula. In this region, which has always accounted for the major share of national electricity, kerosene and cooking gas (LPG) consumption, not only is current percentage household firewood consumption only fractionally lower than in the nineteenth century but a much higher proportion of households consume charcoal now than at any time in the last two centuries (Cline-Cole, 1984a). Today firewood and charcoal combined supply a minimum of 80 per cent of total peninsula energy demand for both domestic and non-household uses (Davidson, 1985). Freetown's firewood consumption also represents some 10 per cent of the national total (Atlanta, 1979).

Recent Activities of the Literature Bureau, Zaria, Northern Nigeria

Africa ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. East
Keyword(s):  
Main Function ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Education Department ◽  
District Officer ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThe Literature Bureau was originally started, in 1930, by the Education Department of Northern Nigeria, as a Translation Bureau. Its main function at first was to produce Hausa text-books for use in schools, but in the years before the war it was trying to lay the foundation of a more general literature for the Hausa-speaking people. In January 1939 a Hausa paper was started with the title Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo, and an Assistant District Officer was attached to the Bureau to supervise its publication and business side. But in 1940, owing to reduction in staff, such a man could no longer be spared, and the paper had to be run without him.

African Ethnographic Maps, with a new Example from Northern Nigeria

Africa ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-65
Author(s):  
R. Mansell Prothero
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Republic ◽  
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Opening ParagraphThere is little evidence to show that ethnic differences in Africa result in problems of lesser magnitude at the present day than in the past. In recent years the problems of ‘minorities’ have had to be considered in Nigeria, while in the Republic of Congo (Léopoldville) ethnic conflicts and the reappearance of past tribal enmities have produced numerous tragic situations during the last twelve months. The frontiers of Africa were delimited by the European powers half a century or more ago and their absurdity in relation to ethnic groups has been demonstrated recently in papers by Barbour and Prescott. They were drawn in ignorance of the different groups of people through which they passed and have now been inherited by independent African governments who will have to face the problems which have been created. To solve them these African governments will need to know more of ethnic groups and their distributions than did their European predecessors and the need for more adequate ethnographic maps is likely to increase rather than diminish.

Some Structural Features of Ingessana Marriage and Affinity

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Jȩdrej
Keyword(s):  
Structural Features ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Ethiopian Highlands ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Bridal Chamber

Opening ParagraphThe Ingessana represent one of the archaic pre-Nilotic cultures on the Sudanese margins of the Western Ethiopian highlands and may be regarded as belonging to that complex of ‘montagnards paléonigritiques’ extending west by way of, among others, the Nuba Mountain peoples, the Hadjeray in Chad and the numerous hill dwelling peoples of northern Nigeria. The customs with which this article is primarily concerned, such as the avunculate, brideservice, mother-in-law avoidance, the construction of a special bridal chamber, are prominent features of this complex but they are neither universally nor exclusively so. Thus, although the principal objective is to contribute to the documentation and comprehension of the marital customs of this ethnological zone, judged to be ‘ancient and probably prior to bridewealth systems’ by Froelich (1968: 202), the analysis necessarily engages with more general and often controversial issues. Perhaps the most pertinent and least distracting approach in these circumstances is that which confines itself to delimiting the set of structural features which the subsequent account draws upon in comprehending the ethnography.

A Nineteenth-Century Ruhr in Central Africa

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Warnier ◽  
Ian Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
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Opening ParagraphOver two hundred thousand cubic metres of slag and smelting debris, at least two hundred and seventy smelting sites, more than seven hundred recorded kaolin pits for building and lining furnaces, and probably half as many again not visited by us—these are a few figures that establish three villages of the Ndop Plain, in the highlands of Western Cameroon, as a nineteenth-century Ruhr in Central Africa. To this day, this all Sub-Saharan African record leaves Meroe, ‘the Birmingham of Africa’ well behind. Perhaps the record remains unbroken, however, just because scholars interested in African iron industries seem to have been unconcerned with the overall output of these industries.

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