Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century 029913024X, 9780299130244

Citation preview

Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century

HausaWomen in the Twentieth Century

Edited by

Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

The University of Wisconsin Press 114 North Murray Street Madison, Wisconsin 53715 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 1991 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved 5

4

3

2

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hausa women in the twentieth century/edited by Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack. 310 pp. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-299-13020-7 ISBN 0-299-13024-X (pbk.) I. Women, Hausa (African people) 2. Women, Muslim. I. Coles, Catherine M. II. Mack, Beverly B. (Beverly Blow), 1952DT515.45.H38H38 1991 305.48'8937-dc20 91-14182 CIP

Contents

vii

Foreword by Neil Skinner Acknowledgments Note on Foreign Terms

IX

xi

1. Women in Twentieth-Century Hausa Society Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack

3

Part 1. Hausa Women in Islam

2. Islamic Leadership Positions for Women in Contemporary Kano Society Balaraba B. M. Sule and Priscilla E.

Starratt

29

Deborah Pellow

50

4. Islamic Values, the State, and "the Development of Women": The Case of Niger Roberta Ann Dunbar

69

5. Hausa-Fulani Women: The State of the Struggle

Bilkisu Yusuf

90

Beverly Mack

109

Allan Christelow

130

Barbara J. Callaway

145

3. From Accra to Kano: One Woman's Experience

Part 2. The Power of Women

6. Royal Wives in Kano 7. Women and the Law in Early-Twentieth-Century Kano 8. The Role of Women in Kano City Politics

Part 3. Women in the Changing Economy

9. Hausa Women's Work in a Declining Urban Economy: Kaduna, Nigeria, 1980-1985 10. Hausa Women in the Urban Economy of Kano

v

Catherine Coles

163

Alan Frishman

192

Contents

VI

Part 4. Women's Voices: Feminine Gender in Ritual, the Arts, and Media

11. Gender Relationships and Religion: Women in the Hausa Bori of Ader, Niger Nicole Echard

207

12. Marriage in the Hausa Tatsuniya Tradition: A Cultural and Cosmic Balance

221

Connie Stephens

13. Women's Roles in the Contemporary Hausa Theater of Niger 14. Ideology, the Mass Media, and Women: A Study from Radio Kaduna, Nigeria Glossary of Hausa and Other Foreign Terms Bibliography Contributors Index

Janet Beik

232

Ayesha M. Imam

244 255 261 289 291

Foreword

Two generations ago Isa Wali, a bright young intellectual of orthodox Muslim background but educated in the colonial schools of Northern Nigeria, wrote a series of articles on the position of women in Islam. This started a ferment that has continued in postcolonial Hausaland among the intelligentsia through coups and counter-coups, periods of military rule and periods of "politics," boom and slump, glad striving after Western materialism and the rise of the new fundamentalism. In those days, except for Baba ofKaro, the only women's words that found themselves in print were in the dialogue of plays like Shu 'aibu MaRarfi's Jatau na Kyallu. In this, and subsequent similar plays about domestic conflict, the women do not mince words when they talk about male tyranny and irresponsibility. But the writers were men, albeit persons of sensibility and imagination. More recently, women have spoken for themselves in print. They do so eloquently in this volume, with some assistance from men whose fields of study are relevant. It is hoped that in another couple of generations, the balance of Hausa to non-Hausa writers may shift. But then they might not write in English! I have heard a fundamentalist Muslim criticize an American scholar for her "interference" in the affairs of Muslim women-not in Nigeria, much further east-and I was happy to remind him that, if the Prophet's successors and their armies had not "interfered," somewhat forcefully, in his homeland, he would still be sunk in fire worship or worse. In some matters, an outside viewpoint helps. It still, of course, behooves a foreign scholar to be more than usually scrupulous in how she interprets data, and wherever possible to quote informants' own words. And that is what has been done here. "Me aka samu?" "Mace." "Allah ya raya, amin!" Or, roughly, "God bless this ship, and all who sail in her!" Neil Skinner Madison, Wisconsin

vii

Acknowledgments

None of the research discussed in this volume, nor the chapters themselves, would have been possible without the hospitality, generosity, and assistance of the Hausa women about whom we have written, and of their families and friends. Our thanks are inadequate for what they have given us in terms of time, interest, and support of many kinds. Whenever we have expressed to them reticence about our work, fearing that it might interfere with their privacy, their response has overwhelmingly been to encourage us to interfere, if that is what is required to tell their stories. They may be secluded, but they are not without concern about the world beyond their own lives, or interest in having the world know about them. We hope that another such volume might include far more work by Hausa scholars, whose intimate knowledge of the culture can yield great insight into Hausa women's lives. Funding for the preparation of the volume was provided by the Department of Anthropology and a Faculty Research Grant at Dartmouth College, for which we are grateful. We thank Debbie Hodges for her editing and typing, and Christina Richards, who worked as a research assistant at Dartmouth. We also thank Dr. Paul Lovejoy for his comments on the volume, and the editors at the University of Wisconsin Press, especially Barbara Hanrahan, Raphael Kadushin, and Jack Kirshbaum. Our husbands, George Kelling and Bob Henry, have provided supp'ort and tolerance through the long process of preparing this manuscript for publica· tion. Although they are not Hausa men, their patience approaches the level of haKuri that is considered a virtue, and we are grateful to them for it. Among Hausa praise singers, such a litany of thanks as this is mere stock in trade; usually their lists of praise ephitets approach Homeric lengths. There can be no competing with that, but we must acknowledge that over several years of production it is inevitable that many people omitted here have assisted us along the way. The energies of everyone involved in this volume will have been rewarded if it can replace at least some stereotypes with enlightenment, and inspire further research of its kind.

ix

Note on Foreign Terms

Many Arabic terms have become a part of the Hausa language, in which a glottal stop is marked in roman script by an apostrophe. Because this study focuses on Hausa, glottal stops for vowels are marked in this way. Ayns and hamzas are not distinguished in Arabic terms used here, but are only indicated by an apostrophe. The Hausa language has several "hooked" letters that are known as glottalized consonants. These include: 6, d, K, and 'y (the upper case are'B 'D K 'Y), and are distinct from the letters b, d, k, and y. Throughout this text, such letters represent glottal sounds and are shown in both upper and lower cases as designated above. Throughout the text foreign words are always italicized. Their origin is given only the first time they appear, and only when they are not Hausa terms. The glossary is a listing of Hausa and other foreign terms. The origin of certain terms is given when the word (usually Arabic) does not appear in the Hausa lexicon. Otherwise it is treated as a Hausa term.

xi

Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century

~

~

~

o\; ~

o-f.

O",Q.,

Map of Western Africa

•

o

100

250

500

Areas of Studies and Urban Centers

Twentieth Century Hausaland

International Boundary

1

Catherine Coles and Beverly Mack

Women in Twentieth-Century Hausa Society

This collection of articles presents data and analyses from recent scholarly research on women in twentieth-century Hausa society. Specifically it emanates from two panels organized for the 1984 meetings of the African Studies Association in Los Angeles, to which scjlOlars who had conducted research into all aspects of Hausa society were invited. The panelists explored the current state of knowledge and directions of research on women and gender in Hausa society, and they initiated a dialogue that could lead to the integration of such research with earlier historical and contemporary accounts of political, economic, social, and ritual-religious life. Participants presented original material from their recent research, addressing whatever problems they deemed important within the framework of their own academic disciplines (history, anthropology, African languages and literature, economics, political science). No attempt was made at imposing particular perspectives or directing papers toward specific topics. Rather, an explicit goal of the entire process was to identify and explore different interpretations, issues, and points of agreement and disagreement as they emerged. This volume brings these papers together with additional manuscripts which were solicited from individuals unable to attend the panels. All chapters are previously unpublished. The chapter by Bilkisu Yusuf is the only contribution from outside academia. Yusuf is a journalist and recently served as editor of the New Nigerian, a prominent newspaper in northern Nigeria; as a Hausa woman 3

4

COLES &

MACK/Women in Twentieth-Century Rausa Society

she speaks personally to many of the issues discussed in other chapters, as do Balaraba Sule and Ayesha Imam. Most Hausa today live in West Africa, in northern Nigeria, or southern Niger. They constitute one of the largest and most influential ethnic groups in Africa, and their language, Hausa, is the lingua franca of West Africa, spoken by at least fifty million people. Although a small number of Hausa, known as Maguzawa, are Christian or animist, Hausa culture and society are overwhelmingly Islamic. Hausa women are among the most strictly secluded Muslim women in Africa. The increasing identification of Muslim Hausa with the Islamic world in the last decade has created political tensions within Nigeria. For those who study Hausa women this change brings to the forefront the question of the specific impact of Islam on women's lives. Hausa culture and society are complex and include many extremes of experience: urban and rural communities, agricultural systems and highly specialized craft production, Muslim and non-Muslim religious and ritual systems, and a highly elaborated status system based upon occupation and birth. Hausaland itself has been a center of trade and cosmopolitan activity for many centuries, with Hausa traders traveling as far south as Zaire, and to the north, west, and east coasts of the continent; Muslim pilgrims journeyed east and north for the hajj to Mecca (Lovejoy 1970, 1971; Works 1976). Both traders and pilgrims carried Hausa cultural practices along with them, influencing social and culturallife in, and spreading the Hausa language to, communities in which they settled. Within Hausaland itself, indigenous peoples at various times were influenced or ruled by immigrants such as the Wangarawa, the Kanuri, the Fulani (Hiskett 1984), and under colonial administrations the British (in Nigeria) and French (in Niger). In the face of all such challenges to its traditions, Hausa culture has maintained its own language and cultural attributes, assimilating the new and useful, and defusing whatever threatened its cohesiveness. Not surprisingly, the Hausa have been studied extensively, attracting the attention of travelers, Islamic scholars, colonial officials, historians, linguists, and anthropologists. Accounts have focused especially on the development of the Hausa city-states in northern Nigeria and southern Niger with their complex bureaucracies and highly developed economies (M. G. Smith 1960, 1978; Hogben and Kirk-Greene 1966; Dunbar 1970), the wide-ranging activities of Hausa traders, and the nineteenth-century creation of an extensive Islamic empire in Hausaland-the Sokoto Caliphate (Last 1967; Hiskett 1973). Up until the 1970s, much of this published literature touched only peripherally, if at all, upon women. In fact, much of the early scholarship on "Hausa soceity" actually documented and analyzed the activities, perceptions, and ideals of Hausa males. A significant exception to this tendency was Mary Smith's biography, Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Rausa (1954). The first published work

COLES &

MACK/Women in Twentieth-Century Hausa Society

5

in which women were the specific focus of inquiry, it may be considered a counterpart to (her husband) Michael Smith's extensive anthropological studies of Nigerian Hausa society, in which he presented a substantial amount of descriptive information on female activities without attempting to set forth women's perspectives (M. G. Smith 1955). Following this, Rachel Yeld's research on status in Hausa society (1960) considered women as well as men, and a situation similar to that of the Smiths occurred later when Abner Cohen and his wife collected data on women for a single chapter in his analysis of the strategies of Hausa traders in Ibadan (1969). Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s a virtual explosion occurred in research on Hausa society, and intense efforts began which led to more widespread collection of data on females as well as males. This has continued through the 1980s. For the most part scholars involved in research during this twenty-year period of heightened activity have framed their questions and directed their efforts toward either males or females, with little attempt made at including both. Descriptions of Hausa society have emphasized discrete gender-specific social and economic spheres, linking these with the widespread seclusion of adult women of childbearing age. This polarization in research foci clearly reflects the paradigms within which scholars were trained and which continue to shape their research as much as any "reality" in Hausa society. To investigate power and authority in a society, for example, they have examined formal political hierarchies and roles clearly dominated by males (M. G. Smith 1960,1978; Last 1967; Hiskett 1973), rather than ways in which power is dispersed throughout society and exercised by individuals and groups (some female) over others. This trend is certainly not absolute: Polly Hill's studies of agriculture and rural Hausa life include substantial sections on women (1969, 1972, 1977), as do those of Michael Smith (1955). Yet these examples are not typical of most research conducted during this period, in which a definite polarization exists between studies which focus upon males and those which examine "femaleassociated" topics. Together the chapters in this volume chronicle a broad range of women's experiences in Hausa society, expanding a more narrow conception of their lives that might easily be construed from a reading of the existing published literature. For example, not all Hausa women live in the old walled cities (birni): the behavior and economic activities of Hausa women in Kaduna (Nigeria), a colonial city, and Accra (Ghana) are described by contributors Catherine Coles and Deborah Pellow. Of necessity there are omissions, some significant, in the coverage of Hausa women's lives presented: for example, rural women are not well represented, yet they play crucial roles in agriculture and development processes in many areas of Hausaland (Simmons 1975, 1976). Neither are non-Muslim women treated, although Nicole Echard's chapter on

6

COLES &

MACK/Women in Twentieth-Century Rausa Society

bori addresses a set of non-Islamic religious practices. Case studies do include

women from both Nigeria and Niger. Furthermore, they concentrate on what we should more accurately refer to as "Hausa-Fulani" women, whose families represent the indigenous Hausa, or Ha6e, element of society as well as Fulani who have intermarried with Hausa, especially since the time of the Fulani jihad and Sokoto Caliphate in the early nineteenth century. The dominant approach toward gender in Hausa society in scholarship to date has been to emphasize the subordination of women to men arising from the intersection of a patriarchal Islam and Hausa cultural values which were in place prior to colonization. Yet a preconceived assumption of gender asymmetry actually distorts many analyses, since it precludes the exploration of gender as a fundamental component of social relations, inequality, processes of production and reproduction, and ideology (Ortner and Whitehead 1981; Lamphere 1987). We suggest that this exploration should be a high priority in future research on and analysis of Hausa society, and prior to any assumptions or findings on gender asymmetry. We further propose that Hausa women's current "invisibility" arises out of a lack of understanding of the nature and importance of their participation in basic social processes; indeed, the redefinition of particular processes may be required in order to make visible their participation. This approach is discussed more fully in the pages which follow. The first step toward its implementation has already been initiated through documentation and analysis of actual female behavior and interaction of Hausa women with different social identities and at different stages in the lHe cycle (Schildkrout 1988; Mack 1988; Potash 1989; Morgen 1989:6-7; Coles 1990b). Many of the chapters in this volume do not address the theoretical perspective set out in this introduction, nor would all the authors necessarily accept or choose to work within it. Each chapter does offer new data on women's participation in one of four arenas of Hausa society that form the basis for the volume's organization: Hausa women in Islam; the power of women; women in a changing economy; and feminine gender in ritual, the arts, and media. Chapters included in each section contribute differing and even conflicting interpretations and conclusions. They are introduced in the following discussion, which summarizes data on women currently available in each arena, and suggests ways in which future research and analysis could move beyond limiting stereotypes that have persisted. Hausa Women in Islam

The specific impact of Islam on women's roles in Hausaland is not as apparent as is often assumed. Here, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, a syncretistic blend of Islam and local cultural features shapes women's lives-sometimes in the direction of patriarchal systems and practices which emanate culturally

COLES &

MACK/Women in Twentieth-Century Hausa Society

7

from the Middle East and those societies in which Islam originated, at other times reflecting (sometimes equally patriarchal) local custom-often making it difficult to distinguish traits or behaviors arising out of Islam from those that were originally "Hausa." However, a careful investigation of gender roles in Hausa society before and after the adoption of Islam shows quite clearly that the spread of Islam, and particularly the Fulani jihad (holy war) early in the nineteenth century, changed profoundly the social, political, and cultural conditions of Hausaland for women (Hiskett 1973, 1984; Mary Smith 1981; Boyd and Last 1985). Although Islam originally entered Hausaland in the late eighth century, data from origin myths, king lists, and historical sources such as the Kano Chronicle indicate that several centuries before widespread conversion to Islam occurred females appear to have participated actively in fO;·'1lal public affairs, may have held positions of leadership, and seem to have been no more legally constrained than men by their gender (Palmer 1928:142-43). Data on the nonMuslim Maguzawa (although they must be critically evaluated and used with care) provide an important source of information on the status and roles of free women in rural Hausa society prior to the establishment of Islam. Jerome Barkow (1970, 1972, 1973) and Joseph Greenberg (1946, 1947) assume that the Maguzawa religious system, clan organization, and other aspects of social life including gender roles may be representative of earlier Hausa society. They describe mid-twentieth-century communities of Maguzawa in which women are not secluded but rather interact freely with men, where Maguzawa females marry later than do Muslim Hausa girls and to men closer to their own age, and where women farm their own plots from which they feed their families (in addition to participating in communal family farming). Maguzawa females also play significant roles in the spirit possession cult of bori as well as minor roles in clan and domestic group rituals. Eighteenth-century European traveler's accounts of Hausaland also describe women in town, some of whom sold wares in Hausa markets (Denham et al. 1826; Clapperton 1829; Lander 1830; Barth 1857; Robinson 1896; Moody 1967). Although the wives of Hausa kings were sometimes restricted to the women's quarters-the harem-most other women were free to move about. Such liberalism was challenged by the Sokoto jihad, a campaign of Islamic religious reform that swept Hausaland from 1804 to 1812, spread by the armies of the Fulani cleric Usman