Hausa

ETHNONYMS: Afnu (the Kanuri term) or Afunu; Ama or Azna, Bunjawa, Maguzawa (non-Muslims); Aussa, Haoussa, al Hausin

Orientation

Identification. The Hausa constitute the largest ethnic group in West Africa. The term "Hausa" actually refers to the language and, by extension, to its native speakers, of whom there are about 25 million.

Location. The Hausa are scattered across the savanna of northern Nigeria, the adjacent area of Niger, and, as a result of extensive migration, in enclaves in various African cities as far south as the Atlantic coast. The focal homeland covers an area about 640 kilometers wide, from Lake Chad to the east to the Niger River in the west. It extends from 11o to 14° N and from about 2° to 14° E. The annual rainfall ranges from about 50 centimeters in the north to 100 centimeters in the south.

Demography. There are approximately 22.5 million Hausa in West Africa. According to the last census, carried out in 1963, 80 percent of the Hausa are rural, 20 percent urban. Even with the tremendous urbanization of the 1970s and 1980s, economic problems have led to return migrations to the countryside. Thus, the 80:20 ratio may still stand. Among the Hausa, there is high infant mortality. If a child survives his or her first two years, he or she will probably live to age 50. Risk decreases until one reaches middle age, but many Hausa survive into their 70s and 80s.

Linguistic Affiliation. A Chadic language, Hausa is related to Arabic, Hebrew, Berber, and other Afroasiatic Family members. Proper tone and stress are imperative. Hausa, which was originally written in Arabic script, has a centuries-old literary tradition, but it is also the language of trade and, next to Swahili, is the most widely spoken African language.

History and Cultural Relations

Hausa history is one of immigration and conquest. The Hausa nation has evolved from the incorporation over hundreds of years of many different peoples who joined the original stock. They are united by a common language and adherence to a common religion, Islam. According to tradition, the Hausa people derive from the Hausa bakwai, the "true" seven states, of which Daura (named after its female founder) is considered the most senior. In the myth of origin, Bayajidda, the son of the king of Baghdad, arrived in Daura via Bornu. He killed the snake that occupied the well, impeding the townspeople's access to the water. As a reward, Bayajidda married the queen. Their son Bawo was the progenitor of six sons, thereby founding six states—Daura, Katsina, Zazzau (Zaria), Gobir, Kano, and Rano. Bayajidda's son by his first wife, Magira (a Kanuri woman), founded Biram, the seventh state.

In fact, it is not known when the movement of peoples actually occurred; neither has the migrants' place of origin been pinpointed. The seven Habe kingdoms were formed by a coalescence of strangers with local folk. The emergence of states in Hausaland was apparently associated with the establishment of capital cities as centers of power. They were different from earlier settlements in that they were cosmopolitan, fortified, and each the seat of a king who was recognized as the superior power throughout the surrounding area.

Before 1804, Habe kings ruled over Hausaland; following 1804, the Fulani took over, and by mid-century the Hausa were stratified into three tiers: the hereditary ruling Fulani, the appointive ruling class dominated by Fulani, and the Habe commoners.

Hausa relations with others are considerable, because of their extensive involvement with trade and Islam. There is considerable exchange with the Kanuri to the east, the nomadic Tuareg, and southern Nigerians (Igbo, Yoruba); in their diaspora settlements, other ethnic groups that share their cultural orientation, such as the Wangara, the Zabarama, the Adar, the Nupe, are often lumped together with them as "Hausa."

Settlements

The Hausa classify their settlements as cities, towns, or hamlets. The cities have wards for foreigners, including Tuareg, Arabs, Nupe, Kanuri, and others. The capital cities are walled, and residents live in walled compounds with interior courtyards. Those of the well-to-do are whitewashed and decorated with plaster arabesques. The women's quarters are separate. Urban compounds may house sixty to a hundred persons. Although the Hausa accord urban living the most prestige, they are primarily rural. Each village contains a capital, as well as several hamlets; the capital is divided into wards, housing families of the same occupational group. Traditional village compounds are walled or fenced; materials range from baked clay to mud or cornstalks. Compounds characteristically contain an entrance hut, an open shared cooking and work area, a hut for the compound head, and separate huts for each of his wives. Newer housing is rectangular and concrete. The number of people living in a rural compound ranges from one to thirty, the average being ten.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Agriculture is the main economic activity. Grain is the staple diet, including Guinea corn, millet, maize, and rice. The Hausa also grow and eat root crops and a variety of vegetables. Cotton and peanuts are processed and used locally, but part of the harvest is exported. The Hausa practice intercropping and double-cropping; their main implement is the hoe. The Cattle Fulani provide the Hausa with meat, yogurt, and butter.

Most men also practice a second occupation; ascriptive and ranked, these include aristocratic officeholder, scholar, Islamic cleric (imam), artisan, trader, musician, and butcher. As good Muslims, the urban women are in seclusion (rural women much less so), and therefore dependent upon their husbands for their maintenance; they are economically active from behind the compound walls, however, primarily in order to finance their daughters' dowries. Their work, which includes sewing and selling prepared food and jewelry, is an offshoot of their domestic persona.

Industrial Arts. There are full-time specialists only where there is an assured market for craft products. Men's crafts include tanning, leatherworking, saddling, weaving, dying, woodworking, and smithing. Iron has been mined, smelted, and worked as far back as there are Hausa traditions. Blacksmiths have a guildlike organization, and many are hereditary.

Trade. Trade is complicated and varied. Some traders deal in a particular market, as distinguished from those who trade in many markets over a long distance. This dual trade strategy, augmented by the contributions of the Cattle Fulani, enabled the Hausa to meet all of their requirements, even during the nineteenth century. The markets are traditional to Hausa society and carry social as well as economic significance; male friends and relatives meet there, and well-dressed marriageable young women pass through, to see and be seen. The Hausa differentiate rural from urban settlements in terms of the size and frequency of the markets.

There is also customary exchange that takes place outside of the market. Gift exchanges are practiced at life-cycle celebrations such as childbirth, naming, marriage, and death; other exchanges are framed by religion (alms, tithes, fixed festivals) and politics (expressing relations of patronage/clientage).

Division of Labor. Hausa society traditionally observes several divisions of labor: in public administration, it is primarily men who may be appointed, although some women hold appointed positions in the palace. Class determines what sort of work one might do, and gender determines work roles. When women engage in income-producing activities, they may keep what they earn. Because of purdah, many women who trade are dependent upon children to act as their runners.

Land Tenure. The rural householder farms with his sons' help; from the old farm, he allocates to them small plots, which he enlarges as they mature. New family fields are cleared from the bush.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Although the domestic group is based on agnatic ties, and even as Hausa society is patriarchal, descent is basically bilateral; only the political aristocracy and urban intelligentsia observe strict patrilineality, everyone else practicing bilaterality.

Kinship Terminology. Hausa kinship terminology cannot be classified according to standard anthropological categories because of the number of alternative usages. For example, a man's siblings and his parallel or cross cousins are called 'yanuwa (children of my mother); cross cousins, however, are also referred to and addressed as abokan wasa (joking relations), and special terms distinguishing elder and younger brother and sister may also be applied to both parallel and cross cousins.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Adult Hausa society is essentially totally married. Ideal marriage is virilocal/patrilocal, and it is polygynous: a man is allowed up to four wives at a time. The term in Hausa for co-wife is kishiya, from the word for "jealousy," often but not always descriptive of co-wife relations. Once men begin to marry, they are rarely single despite divorce because most are polygynous; nearly 50 percent of the women are divorced at some point, but there is such pressure to be married and have children that they tend not to stay unmarried long. Important social distinctions identify women in terms of their marital status. By custom, girls marry at the age of 12 to 14. There is some disagreement in the literature regarding the respectful nature of singlehood. Divorce is a regular occurrence, not surprisingly, given the brittle and formal relationship between spouses. Both men and women have a right to divorce, but for men it is easier. After divorce, most weaned children are claimed by their father.

Marriage is marked by bride-price, given by the groom's family to the bride, and a dowry for the bride provided by her family. Marriage is classified according to the degree of wife seclusion and according to whether it is a kin or nonkin union. Bilateral cross-cousin marriage is preferred.

Domestic Unit. The ideal household is the agnatically based gandu (family farm), formed by a man with his sons and their wives and children. After the senior male's death, the brothers may stay on together for a time. More frequently, each brother's household becomes a separate economic unit.

Inheritance. Consistent with Islamic practice, a woman can own and inherit in her own right, but her inheritance rights are subordinate to those of men. All of the wives married to a man at the time of his death are entitled, together with their children, to share one-quarter of his total estate if there are no agnatic descendants, or one-eighth of his estate if there are agnatic descendants. Women own property such as houses and land together with consanguines, even after marriage, and they inherit only half as much as their brothers.

Succession to leadership of the agnatic group and leadership of the compound is collateral. Farmland is inherited in the male line, the gandu being collectively owned by brothers.

Socialization. Women observe a postpartum taboo on sexual intercourse for a year and a half to two years, during which time the child is breast-fed. Toddlers are weaned onto soft foods and then to the standard diet. An older sister carries the infant on her back when the mother is busy, which extends into a special attachment between an adult man and his elder sister.

From infancy, boys and girls are treated differently. Boys are preferred; as they age, they learn that they are superior to girls and consequently to distance themselves from them and identify with things masculine. It is imperative for boys to separate from their mothers. Girls are trained to self-identify in terms of their sex role: domestic (female) skills are taught to young women as they mature. They are admonished to be submissive and subordinate to males. As children, boys and girls are rigidly sex-stereotyped into appropriate behavior.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. One of the most salient principles in Hausa society is the segregation of adults according to gender. Throughout Hausaland, seclusion of married women is normative, and the extradomestic impact of sexual segregation and stratification is that women are legal, political, and religious minors and the economic wards of men. Although women are central to kinship matters, they are excluded from extradomestic discussion and decision making. Both within the household and in the public domain, patriarchal authority is dominant and reinforced by spatial separation of the sexes.

The senior wife of the compound head, the mai gida, is the uwar gida. She may settle minor disputes among residents and give advice and aid to the younger women. Domestic authority rests with the male head of compound/household.

From childhood, males and females develop bond friendships with members of the same sex, a practice continued into adulthood and marked by reciprocal exchanges. Given their seclusion, women tend to formalize their bond ties more than men do. Formal relationships that emphasize differences in status (patron/client) are also established by women, as they are by men.

Political Organization. Organizational structure is hierarchic; the centralized kingdoms, known as emirates, are the primary groupings; districts are secondary and village areas tertiary.

The institutions of kinship, clientship, and office (and, in the past, slavery) in the emirates, have provided the fundamentals of Hausa government from the sixteenth century until the middle part of the twentieth century. Rank regulates relations between commoners and rulers.

"Traditional and modern government proceeds through a system of titled offices . . . , each of which is in theory a unique indissoluble legal corporation having definite rights, powers and duties, special relations to the throne and to certain other offices, special lands, farms, compounds, horses, praise songs, clients, and, formerly, slaves" (Smith 1965, 132). In most states, major offices are traditionally distributed among descent groups, so that rank and lineage intertwine. The traditional offices differed in rewards, power, and function, and were territorially based with attendant obligations and duties. Within communities, the various occupational groups distribute titles, which duplicate the ranks of the central political system.

Clientship links men of unequal status, position, and wealth. It is a relationship of mutual benefit, whereby the client gains advice in his affairs at the minimum and protection, food, and shelter at the maximum. The patron can call upon the client to serve as his retainer.

In applying his notion of government to Kano, the Fulani religious and political leader Usman dan Fodio, when he launched his successful jihad against the king of Gobir in 1804, he followed the basic premise of a theocracy within a legalistic framework; government, and its chief agent, the emir, were perceived as an instrument of Allah.

Social Control. Legal affairs fall under the jurisdiction of the emir, and he is guided by Islamic law. The Quran, the word of Allah, and its hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, along with the dictates of secular reasoning provide answers to legal questions. The Sharia, the canon law of Islam, is fundamentally a code of obligations, a guide to ethics. Sanctions of shame and ostracism compel conformity to Hausa and Islamic custom.

Conflict. When disputes arise, the Hausa may opt to go to court, submit to mediation, or leave it to Allah. The basic process involves deference to mediation by elders.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. About 90 percent of the Hausa are Muslims. "The traditional Hausa way of life and Islamic social values have been intermixed for such a long time that many of the basic tenets of Hausa society are Islamic" (Adamu 1978, 9). Islam has been carried throughout West Africa by Hausa traders.

Adherents are expected to observe the five pillars of Islam—profession of the faith, five daily prayers, alms giving, fasting at Ramadan, and at least one pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj). Within Hausa society, there are sects (brotherhoods) of adherents; of these, the Tijaniya, Qadriya, and Ahmadiyya have been important. Wife seclusion is basic to the Hausa version of Islam, although it is believed that the institution is more a sign of status than of religious piety.

Even among some Muslims, as among the Maguzawa pagans, spirit cults persist. One, the Bori, has more female than male adepts; cultists are believed to be possessed by particular spirits within the Bori pantheon.

Religious Practitioners. Although such personnel as imams and teachers (mallamai; sing. mallam ) have no churchly functions or spiritual authority, they do tend to assume or accept some measure of spiritual authority in certain contexts.

Ceremonies. Men are enjoined to attend Friday prayers at the mosque. Men and women celebrate the three main annual festivals of Ramadan, Id il Fitr, and Sallah. Life-cycle events—birth, puberty, marriage, death—are also marked.

Arts. The arts are limited to those forms allowed by Islam; the Hausa use Islamic design in their architecture, pottery, cloth, leather, and weaving. Music is an integral part of Hausa life and can be classified in terms of function and audience: for royalty, for dancing pleasure, and for professional guilds. Each category has its own instruments, which include drums as well as string and wind instruments. Poetry exists in an oral tradition, as practiced by the praise singers and the oral historians, and also in the written tradition of the learned.

Medicine. There is a tricultural system that consists of strong traditional roots set in the framework of a predominantly Islamic mode, now augmented by Western medicine. The Bori spirit-possession cult is relied upon for various kinds of curing, and this involves diagnosing the particular spirit giving the sick person trouble.

Death and Afterlife. Burial is in the Islamic manner. Upon death, the individual passes on into the realm of heaven (paradise) or hell, consistent with Islamic teaching.

Bibliography

Adamu, Mahdi (1978). The Hausa Factor in West African History. London: Oxford University Press.

Coles, Catherine, and Beverly Mack, eds. (1991). Women in Twentieth Century Hausa Society. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Hill, Polly (1972). Rural Hausa: A Village and a Setting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paden, John (1974). Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Smith, Mary E (1981). Baba of Karo. New Haven: Yale University Press. Originally published in 1954.

Smith, M. G. (1965). "The Hausa of Northern Nigeria." In Peoples of Africa, edited by James L. Gibbs, Jr., 119-155. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

DEBORAH PELLOW