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Historical Metaphors in the Kano ChronicleAuthor(s): Murray LastSource: History in Africa, Vol. 7 (1980), pp. 161-178Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171660 .

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HISTORICAL METAPHORS IN THE KANO CHRONICLE

Murray Last University College, London

"There is a story that the Prophet appeared to Abdu Rahaman in a dream and said to him, 'Get up and go west and establish Islam.' Abdu Rahaman got up and took a handful of the soil of Medina and put it in a cloth and brought it to Hausaland. When- ever he came to a town, he took a handful of the soil of the country and put it beside that of Medina. If they did not correspond, he passed that town. So he journeyed until he came to Kano. And when he compared the soil of Kano with Medina soil they resembled one another and became as one soil. So he said, 'this is the country that I saw in my dream.'" [xx]

I

I wish in this paper to treat the Kano Chronicle (henceforth KC) as a document of intellectual history, and not just as a mine from which to dig valuable 'facts.' The aspect of intellectual history I will discuss is the meaning of historical metaphors - or analogical geography - of which the above story is a rather special example. But first I will try and show that the first 'edition' of KC was completed in the mid-seventeenth century and was compiled from materials which had been developed since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - thus locating the intellectual history in a specific period. The texts used are discussed in the appendix.

In writing this essay I am treading where many have trod before. Abdullahi Smith's work on the Sayfawa and on the origin of the Hausa states and Mervyn Hiskett's publications on the Kano Chronicle and on the Song of Bagauda are the most notable examples. But I am sure most historians of Hausaland have 'had to go' at KC, though fewer seem to have published their conclusions. To underline the tentativeness of my argument I have laid out the paper in the form of nine hypotheses; and as textual criticism is apt to be a very convoluted topic (particularly without the

original alongside) I shall simply indicate in brackets the reigns of the Kano kings by the Roman numerals used by Palmer, whose text is much the most readily available.3

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162 MURRAY LAST

II

Hypothesis 1: that KC was not composed reign-by-reign but was put together by one man, at one time, and subsequently brought up to date, several reigns at a time.

The evidence for this lies in the inter-connections between reigns (e.g. between Exxvi/xxvii]; Exxviii/xxix];Exxxvi/xxxvi i]) which betray hindsight. Against this are the few contradictions or improbabilities where 'Homer nods,' but they seem to me to be rare enough almost to be evidence for, rather than against, single authorship. One warning, however: Palmer tends to translate away the inconsistencies.

Hypothesis 2: that the main edition of KC can be dated to the mid-seventeenth century.

The internal evidence for this is the sentence "for a reason I forget"Exxx] ca. 1649, which surely can only imply the author was writing some ten to twenty years (or more) later. Circumstantial evidence is perhaps the near-total consistency in rulers and reign lengths found in KC and Song of Bagauda and Kano kinglist after 1652 Exxxiii]: from that period on, there seems to have been a single authoritative source. But against this, there is the absence of any explicit reference to the Asl al-Wangariyin, written in 1651 (indeed KC contradicts the Asl). Generally, however, one can argue that the seventeenth century was a period when historical writing of this rationalist kind was commonplace, particularly in Borno or Timbuktu/Songhai. The context in which KC was compiled would seem then to be the period of the Kororofa invasions: one can speculate on the motives for historical writing in such circumstances.

Hypothesis 3: that KC as composed in the mid-seventeenth century was put together from numerous earlier recrods which were the product of a sudden growth in historical interest and record- keeping in the sixteenth century. These materials, mainly songs or praise-songs but also oral narrative and written kinglists, reveal themselves in KC by (a) the extreme precision of some of the reign lengths after Exxiii, ca. 1565]; (b) mention of Dunki's praise-songs of anyone of any note Exxii] and quotations from several other songs; (c) refernce to a Shicr Barbushe (Exiii]; "Wakar Barbushe") and a Qissat Amina Exv]; (d) the author himself says he is choosing between traditions (e.g. in Exi]) or has a "general belief" (al-mashor) to take into consideration (Eiii] and Ev]). An extant seventeenth-century example of a typical source is Dan Marina's peem on the Borno victory over the Kororofa. It is from this body of traditions that the other Kano sources (Song of Bagauda, Kano Kinglist, and Asl) independently drew their data, and which accounts for their variations. The possible 'slip' in the passage from KC Exx] quoted above, where the compiler refers to cAbd al-Rahman (al-Zaiti) instead of cAbd al-Karim (al-Maghili) may be a product of a rare error in conflation.

Hypothesis 4: that there are four historiographical blocs in KC; (a) the 1650-1930 period, based on contemporary or eye-witness accounts; (b) c. 1550-1650 period, for which there is very consider-



HISTORICAL METAPHORS IN THE KANO CHRONICLE 163

able consistency and precision in the record, due to sources based on living memory of songs and possibly written records; (c) the c. 1450-1550 period, for which the accuracy is patchy, the sources being oral tradition and possibly gleanings from the historical tradition of neighboring states (e.g. Borno); (d) the pre-1450 period: the accounts here are almost wholly legendary, reflecting as much contemporary (that is, seventeenth-century) interests and reality as any historical hearsay; it is the product of seventeenth- century Kano rationalism working on folklore collected both in various quarters of the city and from country people.

This division does not, of course, mean that the data in blocs (a) and (b) are a wholly full or accurate record of their periods. The evidence for this schema lies in part in the degree of consistency among the three main sources for names of kings and the lengths of their reigns. Regarding the post-1650 period there is no dispute. Hiskett, however, remarks on the vast discrepancies for the earlier period, but he is, I think, mistaken: for the period between Dauda (Exv], c. 1430) and Soyaki (Exxxiii], 1652) the Song of Bagauda and the Kinglist agree, perhaps fortui- tously, on the numbers of years elapsed (272 years 10 months for SB; 272 years 6 months for the KL), compared with KC's 238 years. Although the individual allocation of years varies widely, the order of the rulers is less erratic, while the total number of rulers is fairly consistent: SB has 14 (Rimfa is an obvious mis- placement), KL has 16 and the KC has 19 (but three rulers included in KC are not in the others because they ruled only one day, seven days and about forty-eight days). Halfway through the Dauda - Soyaki series, reigns start being given in months and days (e.g. Exxiii] Yakufu, c. 1565), and it seems likely that whoever was keeping such details was also able to draw on relatively accurate data for the previous 100 years (i.e. their grand- or great-grandparents' generation), but no uniform, authoritative text had emerged.

For the pre-Dauda ([xv], c. 1430) period, the reign lengths are dictated, I suggest, by poetic or conventional requirements. The totals of years elapsed are inconsistent (KC, 452; SB, 580; KL, 329), though the total number of rulers is identical, being seventeen in all three lists. The names of the rulers are common, more or less, to all three lists, but the discrepancies occur most frequently in the middle, between the Bagauda cycle [i-iv] and the Yaji cycle Exi-xiii]. Such a mid-range discrepancy is a common feature in genealogies generally, and should not surpise US.

An example of the patterning of reign lengths in KC is Cycle A [i-iii], 66, 33, 40 years; followed by the twins' [iv] 7 and 17 months; Cycle B [v-vii] 60, 55, and 44 years; followed by [viii/ix], 17 and 37 years and then Ex/xi] 7 and 37 years. Although the pattern does not precisely match my analysis of the contents, the common outline will I think be recognizable.

Interest lies therefore in how this early bloc of histories came to be composed, and what consequences this has for the data purportedly contained in it. If it was a seventeenth-century rationalization of sixteenth-century materials plus contemporary



164 MURRAY LAST

seventeenth-century oral tradition collected by the author, then one should expect to find anachronisms.

Hypothesis 5: that the early (pre-1450) parts of KC are potentially full of sixteenth- or seventeenth-century anachronisms. The most obvious of these are:

(i) Bindiga (Exv], c. 1430) coming from Borno. Later on in KC, bindiga are said to have come first in c. 1735 (Exxxviii]; but, note, this passage is not in East's text) but they are first put into use, says KC, by a Kano king Exli] c. 1770.

(ii) Horses are first mentioned in Yaji's reign (Exi], c. 1350) but the author of KC says he rejected this tradition, presumably because he had been using the cavalry titles Madawaki and Dawaki as early as Bagauda's heir Eii]. But it is only after Yaji Exi] that horses and their gear became commonplace but crucial to campaigns, and I suggest that the occurrences of the terms Madawaki (Cii] and Eix]) and Dawaki (only in [ii]) are anachronistic. The titles Galadima and Makama may also be anachronisms in the very early period: Galadima is mentioned in [ii] (along with Dawaki), and in Evii] but, like Madawaki, became important (with more than one holder) only in Exil and later. Makama occurs again in [ii] and [ix] (like [vii], in which the Galadima appears, it is part of the Red Snake saga; see below). Only Barde and Jarumai (scarcely a "title") do not fail this test.

(iii) Cattle are first mentioned in [iii] in connection with a sacrifice at the start of the wall-building; they recur again in the same context in Nazaki's extension of the wall c. 1620 Exxviii]. Fulani cattle are first specifically mentioned in the next reign Exxix]; by (Exxxviij, c. 1710) a number of Sarkin Fulani are mentioned. The sacred object 'Dirki' which was first used c. 1600 Exxvii] was originally covered in goats' skins, according to a marginal note in the text, and only later re-covered in cow hide. Incidentally, while goats, chickens, and dogs are all mentioned, sheep are not (Palmer's "black sheep" on p. 119 is of course an anglicism); nor are donkeys mentioned except to carry the disgraced Madawaki to a death of shame. Camels are specifically mentioned as first coming c. 1440 Exvi]. It is tempting to date the common use, if not the introduction, of a number of animals to the fifteenth century, which in the record stands out as the period of 'inter- nationalism' in Hausa land, with Wangarawa, Fulani, Azbinawa, and Bornawa all passing through.

As important, perhaps, as anachronisms is the failure to mention certain items, some of which have already been mentioned. States outside Kano are another obvious example: the first mentioned is Kororofa (Exil, [xiii]), then Zakzak ([xiii], [xv]), Nupe Exv], Borno, Asben, Gwanja Exvi], and Katsina not until Exix]. Only the Wangarawa occur early Exi], but I suspect this is an anachronism (as does the AsI; see below). The term "Hausa" is first used also in [xv] (and not in Ciii] or [xiii], pace Palmer), but "Hausa Seven" is used only in the eighteenth-century [xxxvii]; but Celebi had heard it used in the 1670s). Silver and gold also are mentioned only late, c. 1650 [xxix] and [xxxiv], despite the Akan gold trade;




kola from Nupe, however, occurs earlier ([xv3; but see below) - unless both gold and kola are included in the ambiguous "all the things of the west" Exv3.

Another striking aspect of the early legends is the absence of any mention of slavery until the reign of Tsamiya [ix3, where it is seemingly the equivalent of jizya, and the slaves are refused. A slave of the king is mentioned in Exi3, then later in Exi3 slaves are mentioned as tribute; thereafter they are common. Unless jizya is meant throughout to mean slaves (jizya is used, for example, in Ev] for tributaries, and again in Evil in contrast to a local farmers' land tax of one-eighth), it appears that the early traditions generally refrained from reading back into the past the conditions of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.

Finally, apart from a brief reference in the introduction, one would never have known from KC (or, for that matter, the Song of Bagauda) that Dalla hill had been an iron smelting site in the seventh century.4 The early traditions, then, are not derived from smiths.

Hypothesis 6: that it is possible to 'unpack' the Kano Chronicle and sort its contents into their component traditions.

First, let me recapitulate: I am assuming that the seventeenth-century author of KC had before him a number of traditions, all referring to this early period; that his achieve- ment was to put them in some chronological order, balance out the rival versions, and eliminate the contradictions. His assumptions were that there was a progressive development in state power around the Dalla hill area; strangers (particularly Muslim strangers) were important factors at certain specific turning- points; peaceful reigns tended to alternate with expansionist ones; and nine was the conventional symbolic number for Kano (nine miles, nine years, nine heroes, nine councillors). The principal stories making up the early sections are:

Pre-Birni Tales

1. The "song of Barbushe." The people in this story are black giants, elephant hunters using sticks or rope, and living on rocky outcrops. There is no political chief, but a shrine which coordinates ritual activities over a wide area; and the local 'big man,' while not the priest, gains some authority from his control of the shrine. Barbushe is the 'big man;' the priest is Mai Tsumburbura, the grove is called Kagua (possibly a copyist's error for gwinki?). The spirit is Tsumburbura (which may be a form of the Hausa tsumbura meaning stunted or uncookable, both appropriate meanings for a spirit today; otherwise the possibilities for emending that word are legion - e.g. a form of Dan bori, DanbaBare; Jan bori, etc.). The sacred tree in the grove is called Shamus, which surely is a corruption of the Hausa tsarniya. Barbushe, I am told, is still used as a name, though if one is searching for emendations, I suppose baFarisi, the horseman/ Persian of Berber legends, is a remote possibility.

2. The Mazauda cycle. This is clearly an alternative pre-



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Birni story, with a different shrine as well as a different economy. Here the shrine is called Randaya (possibly a complicated corruption of a Hausa version which described the shrine's distinc- tive oracular technique of a quivering tree: (could, for example iska ta rau da ice become iskanta Randaya ce?). The sacred place is called Matsama/Mazama, possibly a corruption of matsafa, the usual term for a magical place of the sort described. The shrine in the Mazauda cycle is centered on a thicket of trees (kurmi) around a dark pool (bakin ruwa) in the river Jakara; that is to say, it is not a grove (gwinki), but another of the common stop- ping places on the spirit highways that criss-cross Hausaland.

The shrine, however, is largely irrelevant to the Mazauda cycle, which is concerned not with giant hunters on rock, but with occupational groups and their founding ancestors. The story of some of their descendants is carried on into later parts of KC, and I suggest it represents the urban, non-Muslim version of pre- Islamic Kano, possibly emanating from the Bakin Ruwa ward in the seventeenth century.

The contradication between the two stories is masked by some geographical information sandwiched in between. But the confusion is obvious: Bagauda is meant to have met Mazauda and his ten companion craftsmen in situ, but a few lines earlier he has already met the remaining five of Barbushe's thirteen com- panions, while a few lines later it transpires that Bagauda himself never actually came to Dalla. This illustrates a technique used by the author of KC: he explicitly mentions his varying sources, then puts them in sequence, or alternates between them.

The Mazauda cycle is not mentioned in the Song of Bagauda. Indeed, the first part of Song seems to be closer to the Barbushe song (it is possible that the text in the Song should read Barbushe and not Bagauda after the first of the two heroes called Bagauda in the Song). Both my "song of Barbushe" and the Song of Bagauda celebrate farmer-hunters; it is tempting to guess that the author of KC got some of his data from the Maguzawa who visited the city in the mid-seventeenth century Exxxiv] when KC was being compiled. That is to say, it is the rural notion of early Kano, in contrast to the urban Mazauda.

Birni legends

3. Bagauda. The story of Bagauda, the author of KC says, has two versions, one making him come to Dalla, the other (the wanderings of Bagauda) making him stay at Sheme. The author uses the latter version for his reign-by-reign account, having Gijimasu actually settling by Dalla, but he inadvertently uses the former version, I think, in Eiii] when he says the rulers of Gano, Dab and Debbi preceded Bagoda here by nine years.

Bagauda came from the northwest, where his name (in Katsinanci) is baGabda, or the "Copt" (compare the account in Muhammad Bello's Infaq al-maisur where the Gobirawa are called Qibt or Copts). He is presumably part of the Egyptian/Berber cycle of stories, from which Bayajidda also derives. But Bagauda's other name is given as Dauda, and in this role he builds a city




called Talutawa, appropriately enough as Talut is of course Saul. One wonders if, in the original source Bagauda's opponents were not Jalut/Goliath. Finally, Bagauda's mother is given as Kaunasa (in the Kano Kinglist that is the name of the ruler after Bagauda), an echo perhaps of the title of the Meroitic queen Candace.

Whoever was Bagauda's successor, the name given in KC- Warisi - simply means Heir, al-Warith; there is no indication now if the heir was a woman. The Heir's successor is Gijimasu - is there some play here on the word Magaji (= 'heir')? In Gijimasu's reign, the author of KC is again confronted with a variant tradition. He seemingly prefers to credit Gijimasu with building the walls of Kano, thus making them contemporaneous with the building of Rano's walls, though this is contrary both to "general belief" and, presumably, to the traditions of eastern Kano on which he is also drawing.

In short, I suggest we have a Bagauda cycle which can be paired with Mazauda, its other half in a rhyming doublet (cf. doublets Gawata/Nawata in KC, or Talut/Jalut, Harut/Marut, Yajuj/Majuj in Arabic accounts). For in the Bagauda cycle, we have Mazauda again, offering his daughter to Gijimasu, but being opposed in this by Bugazau, the brewer among his companion craftsmen; and Gijimasu has settled in Gazarzawa, the title to which - Sarkin Gazarzawa - is later to be given to Mazauda's grandson.

4. Yusa. "General belief," says KC, credits the establishment of the city to Yusa (i.e. Joshua), the next ruler of importance (Ev], the fourth are the twins Nawata/Gawata or Noto/Goto, who ruled seven and seventeen months respectively, and seem to act as a hinge between the two cycles). Joshua, deprived of the wall- building story, is credited only with establishing Kano rule in western Kano, and with the introduction of shields (if these are originally garkuwa, perhaps Yusa's alternative name Tsaraki is in for some obscure way the reason for this attribution). In switch- ing the wall building to Gijimasu, the author of KC has also left Yusa's hero, Tuji, stranded without "his" own gate. Since the role given in Joshua by commentators on Sura xviii, verse 59 of the Qu'ran and by al-Tabari makes him as important as Moses in preaching to the Egyptians or in fighting giants, I would hazard the guess that the original story of Yusa in Kano was more important than that alloted to him by KC. Perhaps the Barka mentioned under Bagauda's reign was the great royal Moabite town that Joshua conquered in Tabari's account; Barka is located in KC in north- western Kano and would fit the "western" aspect of the Joshua story - in contrast to the more easterly concerns of the Mazauda cycle. In this case one might link the Joshua story with the "song of Barbushe" (whose forebears, remember, were giants, as were Joshua's opponents; and against whose famous sticks shields would prove an invaluable invention).

5. The Heirs of Mazauda. Their story, along with the Red Snake saga, is the connecting thread through several of the following reigns. It is not very dramatic. Mazauda and his ten partners in the division of labor negotiate with the newcomers. In the first generation Mazauda offers marriage - his daughter to Bagauda's grandson - but is stopped by Bugazau the Brewer. In the second



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generation, they intend to revolt (the author of KC in his usual rational manner implies that the revolt was due to, or was followed by, the king's imposition of a new tax). Mazauda's son Samagi, the Brewer's son, the Youthleader's son and the Drummer's son are all executed for their part in the plot Evil. However, two reigns later Eviii], Samagi reappears alive and well, but this reign reads like mere space-filling designed to keep up the theme of newcomer/aboriginal relations. It is not until the next reign that we meet the third and last generation in the Mazauda cycle: as Makare, Mazauda's grandson, along with the Brewer's grandson and the Nightwatchman's grandson are the only aboriginals to remain behind after the rout of the Red Snake, it is they who are given Kano titles. Makare becomes Sarkin Gazarzawa, in the area to the north of the Jakara. But two reigns later he or his successor is blinded because he defiles the new mosque. He then becomes chief of the Blind (possibly it is 'his' settlement that is the village of the blind located in the north of the city in Clapperton's map of Kano. If so, did this part of the cycle derive from that quarter in the seventeenth century?). The Nightwatchman's grandson became the Sarkin Kurmi, the Kurmi area being by the sixteenth century the market area whose officials were known as Kurmawa, though their quarter now is south of the palace. (Given that kurma = 'deaf,' one can imagine the jokes about aboriginals being either blind or deaf!) Finally, the Brewer's grandson was made Sarkin Tsibiri, a title which weaves in the Red Snake saga. He reappears in Exiii], providing the magic (the red snake again) which enables the ruler to conquer Zaria. In the seventeenth century it was presumably Bakin Ruwa ward which supplied this tradition.

6. The Red Snake saga. No snakes are mentioned before [vii] but, while the magic in this saga seems to me to be clearly distinct from Barbushe's Tsumburbura, some aspects do appear to have been incorporated into the account of Mazauda's Randaya. Though the ruler in whose reign the magic Tsibiri first came was called Tsamiya (i.e. Tsumburbura's tree) or Randamasu (cf. the spirit Randaya), the author of KC says it was a new kind of magic. Tsibiri ("island") would indeed be a suitable term for magic power in the black pool of the Jakara, a power which renders the waters of Dankwoi unfit for warriors to drink; and the association of snakes with water (Gajimare; rainbows) and with wells (e.g. at Daura) fits well. Indeed Dankwoi, where the Red Snake priest fled after being driven from Kano, is on the road to Daura. But though the snake is associated with water, it is also found once in a tree Exiii], where it is also assimilated to Barbushe's magic. But I suspect that tsibiri is really a later emendation of a derivative from the Arabic Tibb tsibbu, or even from sihr (compare the Arabic-derived tsafi, Mande safi, and Tiv tsav). The new magic is similar to Muslim power in having the ability to blind people (Evii], [xil). Snake cults are of course widespread in west Africa but one such, celebrated in Mande stories and therefore perhaps known in Kano, is the (albeit black) Bida serpent of the Soninke state of Wagadu. Given that the Bida snake is a standard 'totem' of Maguzawa, it is possible that the new Red




Snake magic was a Wangarawa import. Whatever its origins, the red snake saga embodies the

politics of confrontation (especially in Eix]), in contrast to the Mazauda cycle's politics of accommodation. It is, however, the tsibiri/red snake that is revived for use against Zaria Exiii] and, more significantly, against the Kororofa attacks in the late seventeenth century Exxxvil - the time when KC was compiled. The account in KC therefore vouchsafes historically the efficacy of the tsibiri/red snake and its subordination as a 'tamed' import within the Muslim Kano state. By this time, Barbushe's tsamiya tree was under al-Maghili's mosque, and Mazauda's pool was a market. Only dirki and chokana (Exxvii~--is chokana a version of sakina, the Ark of the Covenant --cf Qu'ran, sura ii, verse 249?), and tsibiri and bundu Exxxvil remained for use then.

7. The siege of Santolo Exil. This siege is the culmination of a conflict that is first mentioned in [iii] and has a decidedly heroic dimension. Suitably enough, after Bagauda/David and Tsaraki/ Joshua, this first Muslim 'giant-slayer' is called Ali/Yaji. Equally suitable, perhaps, is that it is the first occasion horses appear in KC. Though the author recognizes this, he rejects the tradition. For him, it is the Wangarawa Muslims who bring victory, an interpretation the AsZ al-Wangariyin, which puts their arrival a century later, does not support. Interestingly, twin horns

(qarnain) are found in the Santolo shrine, an echo perhaps of Alexander the Great as Dhu 'l-qarnain and/or the Soninke kings of Ghana who claimed descent from him in their sagas.

The other sagas of expansion are alluded to briefly. This same Ali/Yaji takes on the Kororofa, Kanajeji Exiii] takes on Zaria; there is the Qissat Amina Exv], Zaria's epic of expansion in the same vein, and the stories of Galadima Daudu [xvi]. Of rather a different kind are the stories of visitors such as the Bornu Dagaci (linked historically with the Mai cUthman b. Daud), and the series on famous scholars which in KC appear in the sequence Wangarawa/Filani/al-Maghili, but the order and dating of the first two are open to question.

Lastly, there are some minor narratives in which the theme is emigration. Maguzawa are mentioned as smelters but not smiths early in the Mazauda cycle, but recur again in Ex] as leaving the city and in Exii] as being forced to leave their hill at Fangai, west of Gano. They are mentioned again only in Exxxiv], when summoned to the capital to perform for the ruler. These reigns Ex] and Exii] are curious also in echoing perhaps the Cain/Abel story: Zamnagawa [x] kills his brother; the story is concerned both about the corpse's disposal and about the woman whom the killer wants. Why the Maguzawa episodes are slotted into this story eludes me. A similar episodic story occurs over the non- Muslim Katukawa, possibly from Gaya but who settle eventually at Godia ([xxiii, [xxv], [xxviiI, [xxxil of Baba of Karo, 97). The emigration of Gwandara, another famous Hausa-speaking, non- Muslim group settled in southern Zaria but claiming a Kano origin, is not, however, mentioned in KC, unless they are part of the dispersion from eastern Kano.



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To sum up: as I have reconstructed it, we are left with three major themes. First, the Barbushe-Yusa (Joshua) saga, emphasizing a rural past and associated possibly more with western Kano. Second, the Mazauda-Bagauda (David) cycle, with its 'Coptic' links, located more in eastern Kano but essentially urban and craft-oriented. Third, the coming of Red Snake/Tsibiri, and the coming of Islam/Ali, both perhaps linked with Wangarawa and drawing on memories of Santolo and the early use of cavalry. I suggest that these three should not necessarily be put into a chronological sequence; rather, they represent the coeval traditions of three or four groups with different statuses in the political economy of sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Kano. It was an act of genius on the part of the seventeenth-century author of KC to weld them into a coherent and plausible whole. What, then, is the alternative to his account? One is that Dalla had not gradually grown in power but had been a place of settlement with an independent political and ritual system since 'time immemorial.' But there is still another possible alternative.

Hypothesis 7: that instead of scanning these various sagas about dutsen Dalla, we should look elsewhere for the political proto- history of the area that came to be known as Kano. One obvious candidate as a precursor of Dalla is Santolo. Its position as the leading most populous town and ritual center of the area, the "key to the south," is vouchsafed by the Kano Chronicle

([iii], [xil)' It is an isolated inselberg of rock (unlike Dalla), with a grove on its summit and a lot of early potsherds, but smaller than Kufena or Turunku. The farmland around is obviously fertile, with the prosperous town of Tsakuwa nearby. Let me be speculative and assume that dutsen Dalla was for long merely an outlying place within Santolo's (or some other's) sphere of influence. Dalla's iron ore, along with that of the ridge to the north, is of very high grade and convenient for Santolo, being closer than the Shira ironstones. Dalla was of more ritual significance than any of the places to the north of it [ii], no doubt in part because of its iron but also perhaps because of its association with Santolo. But places further down the valley - Gano with its rock, Debbi, Dab - were perhaps of equal or greater significance ([iii], [xi]) within the Santolo system. Then why was Dalla able to take over from Santolo its primacy in the area? The parallels with Turunku's replacement by Zaria and with Durbi takusheye's by Katsina are obvious. In Kano's case the shift came more through conquest than through migration - or so that is the way it has been recounted. It may be a case of an alliance on the periphery, having access to new ideas and technology (horses) and striking at the center. Whatever the reason, I doubt that the Wangarawa were responsible for the shift; rather they will have come to Dalla because it was already an important town. Had they, or the changes associated with them, come a century earlier (say, mid-fourteenth century) Birnin Kano would now have been around, not Dalla, but Santolo (or some other rock): but in that case would KC have looked so very different from what it is now? As to how the communities at Dalla, or indeed at Santolo, came into being, we simply do not know. But I question the




wisdom of searching KC or the Maguzawa for an answer.,

Hypothesis 8: that instead of dismissing these early sagas, we should treat KC as a document of intellectual history for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kano. The dominant intellectual problem of the sixteenth century was the proper relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim. Since al-Maghili's visit to Kano at the end of the fifteenth century, Islam had become officially the religion of the state, and the Emir now had explicit rules to follow. Equally, it is clear that Kano was far from being wholly Muslim - that much can be inferred from al-Maghili's and al-Suyuti's writings. The traditions which the seventeenth-century author of KC is using arose out of this intellectual climate, and reflect the arguments by which a solution was found to the question of who were dhimmis and how were they to be treated in a way that was legally correct. The solution lay in the use of historical metaphors or analogical geography; just as the soil of Kano was identical in structure to the soil of Medina, so there were similarities in social structure. Thus one non-Muslim category, living as farmers in the countryside but associated ritually as part-time smiths and smelters with fire, were labelled Maguzawa or Magians; another categroy, living in the city, were labelled Rumawa or Byzantines ("because they were a large group" - KC, introduction); a third were Gazarzawa or Khazars, on the north. There was nothing very unusual about this. Berbers, as al-Maghili will have known, were sometimes categorized (or insulted) as Majus: it was obviously a favored label for dhimmis who were, linguistically, 'one of us.' Although in Hausaland it has now been extended to any 'pagan,' its original usage appears limited to non-Muslim Hausa in Kano and Katsina only.

Others had already made use of similar metaphors: the rulers of Borno were Sayfawa from Yaman, so that Kisra was (later?) a logical choice for Kororofa to use; in the same way, the Yoruba were to use Nimrod, the Bariba to use Kisra (again). In the Mande system, the Soninke were Persians, while the ruling Soninke Sisse dynasty of Ghana were descendants of Alexander the Great: in opposition to them, the Keita dynasty of Mali took Bilal, the muezzin of the Prophet, as their ancestor. I suggest that such distinguished descent is not merely a matter of prestige or song- writer's hyperbole or antiquarian interest, but also a matter of politico-legal geography. If this is correct, then these historical metaphors must be read as a series, not necessarily totally consistent but at least as a chain of interlocking pairs. They express a relationship, conveying through this historical idiom sometimes subordination, sometimes an equal, 'joking' partnership, sometimes simply a juxtaposition.

In such an analogy originated, I think, the discussion which Muhammad Bello quotes in Infcq al-maisir over whether Taurudh were Jews or Christians, and the tradition that the Fulani were at least partly to be considered Arabs, by descent from Uqba b. Nafic. Within such a system, with its links into the Tuareg/Berber analogical chain, the Gobirawa fit well as 'Copts.' Other groups have been given names like Samudawa or Adawa (from Ad and Thamud: see Suras VII, 63-77; IX, 52-71; XXVI, 123-159;



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XXVII, 46-54; LIV, 18-31), and it is tempting to think that some prophetic names like Salihawa, Musawa, Adamawa, and Isawa may have been taken, not because they were followers of Salih et al (let alone worshipped these prophets), but because they were categorized as "believers from before the Prophet Muhammad," that is, metaphorically as good Muslims since before the jihad or some other relevant period of reform. Similarly the appearance of Dawud/David, Yusha/Joshua, and Ali/Yaji, along with some corroborative detail, in the narratives of KC establishes the newcomers' credentials vis-a-vis the original inhabitants, not only then but now. The system of ideas, in short, is a coherent whole.

Since few of us are as erudite as the Muslim scholars of the past, we may miss some of their subtler allusions. While I doubt that "Shamus" could be one of their emendations to create a parallel to Solomon's Chemosh (I Kings 11.7; I have yet to find an Arabic version), and perhaps "Chokana" is not really an allu- sion to sakina or the Ark of the Covenant, yet it is just such erudition that we can expect. For it was, after all, a mallam in a footnote to Ibn Fartua's Kanem Wars who first compared "Mune" with the Ark of Saul. Palmer may indeed be quoting a mallam friend of his when he says that Qibt is not Copt but a reference to a Palestinian people.6 Certainly Palmer went to mallams to learn, and I suspect that some of his better ideas are really theirs, not his; in which case we must treat Palmer's works as part of the mallams' tradition - if somewhat adulterated.

Analogical geography was not, of course, a substitute for ordinary geography, but even as a metaphorical tool it seems to have lost its importance, perhaps as early as the seventeenth century. Ahmad Baba used a geometrical geography to resolve the same problem as to who were and who were not Muslims, and his method was followed by Shaikh cUthman and Muhammad Bello. Similarly, genealogical geography lost its significance. But the decline in the value of these particular tools-for-thought should not blind us to their original meaning.

For if historical metaphors were indeed the idiom for establishing politico-legal relationships, then "Maguzawa" becomes a category into which diverse peoples can be put, since they are not an 'ethnic group' and are not in origin necessarily even Hausa-speaking. Secondly, their role as "Maguzawa" is solely a product of their subordination within a Muslim state - they could not, by definition, exist as "Maguzawa" before the Muslim state. Third, their political system, too, was a product of their place within the state: their chiefs were appointed by the state and did not arise spontaneously (though this is not to deny the role of elders, 'big men,' or specialists). Finally, Maguzawa religion was in a certain limited sense a product of the state: as dhimmis, "Maguzawa" were non-Muslim, yet shared a common Hausa culture; and this common culture has altered as a whole over the centuries. For example, KC does not mention or describe bori spirit possession (nor does it mention masks or other disguises, unless possibly the account in Cix] describes one). If bori as spirit possession is a relatively late introduction and was not associated in the




sixteenth or seventeenth centuries with very early Hausa practice, then the development of Maguzawa expertise in the possession cult is also an artifact of their being dhimmi: for such non-Islamic practice is by definition their province.

Economically, a similar argument might apply. Being protected as dhimmis but paying a special tax, they had to be extra- productive farmers. They were also forced to live dispersedly, though their move from the city may have been voluntary. They became, in effect, the frontiersmen, pioneers of new farmlands, and hunters, later sharing not only their forests with pastoralists, but also much by way of culture and economy. "Maguzawa" became a category into which individuals or groups could drop, and from which others could move out and up.

The other historical metaphors of this type - Rumawa, Gazarzawa - have seemingly long lost any association with a category; "Rumawa," for example, may have come to be thought to refer to North Africans in Kano (as in Timbuktu) ExxiiJ, and "Gazarzawa" become simply a place. Consequently, "Maguzawa" as a label has absorbed all those of non-Muslim, dhimmi status and, instead, sub-group labels have come into use within the Maguzawa category. I suggest, then, that to use contemporary Maguzawa practice as evidence for the pre-Islamic Hausa past could be very misleading, even if particular subgroups were singled out as being, in some antiquarian sense, more 'original' than others.

Hypothesis 9: that if we are liable to miss the erudite allusions of scholars, we are also likely to miss their jokes. Since punning, plays on words, and double entendre are the stock in trade of good songwriters and praise singers, we must expect the sources of KC to be full of banter and jokes, which it is all to easy to treat as dour historical fact. I have already suggested that the 'fact' that the two urban pre-Muslim groups are the 'blind' and the 'deaf' is probably a joke. Another joke concerns queen Amina, whose nick- name Kura, (hyena), should make us look out for banter. Surely we are meant to enjoy the observation that it was the legendary queen who should be the first in Hausaland to have eunuchs; and not only this, but that she was also sent goro, a word frequently mis- read as gzxuro or unmarried man. Furthermore, because the words for eunuch and indigo (baba) are virtually identical, could it be that that too is a pun? Who originated the joke (if it is a joke), we do not of course know: maybe it was even a Sarkin Nupe who sent such a present! If the reference to queen Amina in KC is a joke, there is, however, a real-life model for her in the Madaki Auwa, the wife of Rimfa, who as Queen mother dominated Kano in the early sixteenth century (Exxil, [xxii3) and was celebrated in song Exxii3. Obviously I am no expert in seventeenth-century Kano humor, and I am sure I have missed the nuances behind much that has gone into the compilation of KC. I hope others will do better.

III

In the margins to the account of [xxvi] (c. 1580), there is a note dating from the 1880s, which ends with the saying (in East's version) - kome tsaninin jifa a kasa zai fadi; 'Everything comes



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back to its course,' (p. 43) and indeed it is a common feature of KC to find not just titles but events being repeated in different circumstances. There is obviously a pleasure in observing these 'echoes' of earlier events - a pleasure, I suspect, not unlike that which had made historical metaphors so useful and accept- able a solution to politico-legal problems. By the seventeenth century the metaphors from Middle Eastern geography were no longer necessary; Kano intellectuals could by then take their analogies from their own past. The rationalism so evident in KC is probably part of the same change in intellectual climate; it is in strong contrast to the Daura-Bayajidda saga, with its seven children becoming the seven Hausa states. No mention is made of this saga in KC, though a marginal note to the introduction quotes it from another work, as if to make good what seemed to be an omission. Nor does the Song of Bagauda refer to it. It may not have been extant at the time KC was written in the seventeenth century, but it is equally possible that the author found it irrelevant and unsophisticated compared with the materials he was using for that period. He may have felt similarly about the Asi al-Wangariyin, whose author (naively!) preferred to make his founding ancestor a contemporary of al-Maghili and even have him enter Kano city anachronistically by the Kabuga gate. Perhaps the author of KC had read his Ibn Khaldun!

The modernism of the author of KC has not only successfully beguiled us into an uncritical acceptance of his schema, but has, I believe, blinded him to an intellectual aspect of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century revolution which he otherwise gives in dramatic detail. He is spellbound by the political, economic, and scholastic developments - the newly powerful title-holders; the important role of women as Queen Mothers; the slave estates; the expansion of trade and warfare; the inflow of scholars and books (among them, perhaps, knowledge, if not copies, of al-Tabari's or even al-Mascudi's works). Yet along with all these innovations there also came the historical and geographical metaphor, a con- ceptual tool (revolutionary in its own way) not only for making sense of the new information now available and flowing in, but also for applying to the increasingly complex relations among peoples within and around Hausaland. (The Hausa 7/Banza 7 dichotomy is simply a later, more specialized and possibly non- Hausa tool for the same purpose.) But with his obvious interest in 'real' geography and topography (see, for example, the introduction), the author accepted the earlier metaphors as mere names without any special meaning or consistency. As so often, a revolution in one's way of thinking is the most elusive of changes. But because he did take these metaphorical names for granted and did not weed them out, we are able, I believe, to use KC to trace the changes in at least this one aspect of Kano's intellectual history.

APPENDIX

A. The Texts of Ta'rikh Arbabhadha 'l-Balad Al-Musamma Kanu

The texts of the Kano Chronicle which I have used are:




I. H.R. Palmer's copy from Sabon Gari, Katsina and now kept in Jos Museum. He published a translation in 1908. In the 1928 version he changed some of the transliterations and in at least twoplaces the meaning: the 1908 "Lord of Mamale" becomes "our lord Amane" (see Sudanese Memoirs, 2:12-13 for the reason), and "Great Father of Jimuna" becomes "Great Father of us all." The first version was a joint effort with three other Englishmen, not to mention perhaps the Dan Masani of Katsina, with whom he was reading the Risala at the time, or other Katsina mallams; but the emendations in the second version are presumably the product of Palmer's (and anonymous others') later ideas. The footnotes in the translations are also in the Arabic original as marginal notes in Arabic - a fact not immediately obvious from Palmer's text. The translation made by Palmer and his colleagues adheres to the text closely, although obviously one can dispute their interpretation. One area of possible variation is the way sentences are divided or connected; another is the paragraphing. More seriously, however, there is a tendency to iron out contradictions.

II. R.M. East translated (or had translated) into Hausa a copy of an Arabic ms. belonging to Zubairu, son of the Emir of Kano Dabo. Like Palmer's ms. it stopped in Bello's reign (1882-93) but was brought up to date on Sarkin Kano Bayero's instructions. It was published with maps in Labarun Hausawa da Makwabtansu, 2:17-73, in Zaria in 1933, and reprinted in 1971. It differs from the Palmer ms. in omitting certain sentences and adding some extra words (e.g. "guns" omitted in Exxxviii]; "eunuch" added in Exxii]), but the most striking differences are those of interpretation. East's ms. has some but not all of Palmer's marginalia. Four notes are identical, a further three are found only in Palmer (I omit the one-word notes): the extra notes link in the Bayajidda genealogy; give the Kirari for the Madawaki and Dawaki titles in Exil; and offer a critical comment on Sokoto (though the factual part of this note - about the flag - is incorporated into East's text). The last makes it likely that East's is the later copy, though, since the shared footnotes include references to Bello's reign, the time difference involved is not great.

III. A manuscript in Arabic, written by some five different hands, was lent to Northern History Research Scheme at Ahmadu Bello University by Dr. Hassan I. Gwarzo and photographed by me c. 1967. A manuscript copy was later commissioned by NHRS (not by or for me) and made from this photograph in 1971 by a Zaria mallam. He has kept the same pagination, but of course the variation in handwriting has been lost. So too, it seems, have some sentences. I have been able so far to study carefully only a copy of this copy... I give its provenance here because as far as I know there is no other obvious indication of its origin anywhere in print; even my meeting with the mallam in 1971 was accidental. The ms. of Dr. Gwarzo and its copy agrees with Palmer on "guns" and on "eunuchs," but with East on the spelling, for example, of "Indabo." Like East's, it is an updated copy, though it is not yet clear to me if the handwriting changes are significant in this respect.

Copies of the Ta'rtkh arbib hadha 'Z-balad al-musanmna Kanr



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are not particularly rare. Palmer says there were several copies in existence, and referred to the one Lady Lugard had used. Dr. Gwarzo has others in his possession, collected in the course of his own research. Although the variant readings are useful, they are not so far significant enough to alter radically our knowledge of Kano history.

B. Other Sources

I have deliberately refrained from bringing in data extra- neous to the Kano sources. Those Kano sources which I have quoted I have not studied exhaustively yet. They are:

1. Kano kinglists (KL). There are a number of these in the main collections in Jos and Kaduna; the mallam in Palmer's ms. had one, so too did W.B. Baikie in Zaria (sic) in May 1862. This latter was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 27(1867), 102, (a copy of which was kindly lent to me by John Lavers), and it is only this translation that I have so far been able to examine. But it is sufficiently different from KC to suggest that it derives from different sources for the early period.

2. The Song of Bagauda (SB). Here I have used Dr. Mervyn Hiskett's publication in BSOAS mentioned in note 1. In part III (p. 366) he makes one copyist's slip for the reigns of Naguji and Gugua, which is an elegant example of the dangers of working with lists and numbers and dates. His translation of "Maguzawa" in most, but not in every, case as "pagan Hausa" (e.g. lines A.3, A.36, B.4, B.14 and B.17, but not A.3 or A.10) is potentially misleading in the context of this paper. Again, like the Kinglist, the Song of Bagauda is sufficiently different to treat it as an independent source for the early period: that is, KC, KL, SB have some but not all of their sources in common.

3. As al-Wangariyin. I have used only the edition of Dr. Muhammad A. Al-Hajj, published as "A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle on the Origins and Missionary Activities of the Wangarawa" Kano Studies 1/4(1968), 7-42. It is dated 1061 A.H. (1650/51), and gives a distinctly different tradition on both the arrival of cAbd al-Rahman al-Zaiti and the felling of the sacred tsamiya (tamarind) tree.

4. Kano ta Dabo Cigari by Alhaji Abubakar Dokaji. Written at the request of the Emir of Kano, it was published in Zaria in 1958. A start was made on revising the text in 1970, but the author died the following year, leaving his son Ibrahim Abubakar to finish the revision, and a new edition was published in 1978. Although both editions were based on oral tradition, as well as on manuscript data, the early period of Kano history is basically that given by KC. Extra 'local color' is sometimes added; so, too, is the suggestion that Tsumburbura is to be identified with the bori spirit Danko Dan Musa. For the later periods the most striking innovation is the division of the Kings into 'houses,' but it is possible the emphasis on this is a reflection of the




author's knowledge of the history of the English monarchy. The second edition has included without alteration the map of Kano from the second volume of East's Labarun Hausawa but otherwise in substance the first and second editions are identical for the early period.

C. Emendations

I have suggested a number of textual emendations, the logic for which may not be immediately apparent. Possibilities of textual corruption arise because (a) the orthographic conventions for writing such Hausa sounds as ts, ch, sh, s, d, j etc. can vary both among Hausa areas and between originally Fulfulde or Kanuri speakers and Hausa. Similarly, Hausa pronunciation can vary quite markedly; (b) there is sometimes a problem of how to split up continuous ajami script into discrete words - e.g. wa either as an ending or as "and;" b as a prefix "ba" or as "bi," meaning "as" (Barandamasu" or "as Randamasu"); (c) similarly the boundary between Hausa phrases or words and Arabic ones is sometimes ambiguous, particularly as some technical terms (e.g. horses, shields, or musical instruments) are sometimes in Arabic, sometimes in Hausa. Thus the Hausa suffix ce might be the intrusive s in "Shamus." 1 To justify these emendations I have to assume a process somewhat like this: (1) an original oral Hausa source - e.g. 'tsamiya' (2); is written down as Tamiya; and (3) re- copied from dictation (orally) into a different transcription - Shamiya or Thamiya ; then (4) re-copied visually (but wrongly) or which is; (5) arabized to, or makes sense in arabic as, shamus (suns). The absence or presence of vowelling, of course, makes a difference too; so also may the metrical requirements of poetry if it was ever put into a song. Finally, it should be possible for an expert to reconstruct sentences or phrases of the Hausa original before it was put into the rather curious Arabic of the present text. For example, could "the tree was called shamus" have originally been "the tree was a tsamiya," itace tsamiya ce, or however poetic sixteenth-century Hausa would have put it? The danger, of course, lies in being carried away by one's own ingenuity'

NOTES

* The original version of this paper was given at the seminar on the History of the Central Sudan Before 1804, Zaria, 8-13 January 1979.

1. Smith's papers on the Saifawa have not yet been published; M. Hiskett, "The Kano Chronicle," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1957), 79-81.

2. I am grateful to many both in Kano and Zaria who have lent me their copies, their ideas, or simply their attention, but I am particularly grateful to John Lavers.

3. H.R. Palmer, "The Kano Chronicle," JRAI, 38(1908), 59-98;



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republished in his Sudanese Memoirs (3 vols.: London, 1928), 3:92-132.

4. F. Willett, "A Survey of Recent Results in the Radiocarbon Chronology of Western and Northern Africa," JAH, 12(1971), 368.

5. For a more detailed discussion of Santolo and other sites see Murray Last, "Early Kano: the Santolo-Fangwai Settle- ment System," Kano Studies, n.s. 1/4(1979).

6. Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, 1:13, 71; idem, Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London, 1936), 74.

RULERS OF KANO ACCORDING TO KC

Ei] Bagauda

[ii] Warisi

[iii] Gijimasu

[iv] Nawata and Gawata

Lv] Yusa (Tsaraki)

[vil Naguji

[vii] Gugua

[viii] Shekkarau

[ix] Tsamia

Ex] Osumanu Zamnagawa

Exi] Yaji

Exii] Bugaya

Exiii] Kanajeji

Exiv] Umaru

Exv] Dauda

Exvil Abdulahi Burja

Exvii] Dakauta

Exviii3 Atuma

Exix] Yakubu

Exx] Muhamma Rimfa

Exxi] Abdulahi

[xxii] Muhamma Kisoki

Exxiii] Yakufu

Exxiv] Dauda Abasama

Exxv] Abubakr Kado

Exxvil Muhamma Shashere

Exxvii] Muhamma Zaki

Exxviii] Muhamma Nazaki

Exxix] Kutumbi

Exxx] Alhaji

Exxxi] Shekkarau

Exxii] Kukuna

Exxxiii] Soyaki

Exxxiv] Kukuna (again)

Exxxv] Bawa

Exxxvi] Dadi

Exxxvii] Muhamma Sharefa

Exxxviii] Kumbari

Exxxix] Alhaji Kabe

Exl] Yaji

Exli] Babba Zaki

Exlii] Dauda Abasama

Exliii] Muhamma Alwali

Exliv] Sulimanu

Exlv] Ibrahim Dabo

Exlvil Osumanu

Exlvii] Abdulahi

Exlviii] Muhammad Bello



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