Literature

By Dr Shamsuddeen Sani

I thought The Lebanese in Kano: An Immigrant Community in a Hausa Society in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods merely contained a handful of newspaper tales. I was mistaken! Within its pages lies a meticulously researched body of work, a testament to the cultural heritage of Kano that begs to be savoured and preserved for generations to come. It has profound glimpses into the very foundations of Kano’s societal evolution as it illuminates the paramount role played by the Lebanese community in the rich Kano’s historical traditions.

This book, published in 1995 and authored by S.A. Albasu, unfolds with an intricate chronology of eight captivating chapters. As the introduction sets the stage, the initial chapter gracefully delves into the existing body of literature on migration, skilfully intertwining it with the historical fabric of West Africa and Nigeria. Embracing a tangent in the second chapter, Albasu illuminates the emigration of the Lebanese into Kano, beginning in the mid-19th century.

However, a pivotal juncture in Lebanese history within Kano emerged in 1920, a defining moment marked by profound geographical and religious divisions among the Lebanese migrants. The historical catalysts propelling Lebanese emigration into Nigeria were meticulously examined within this segment.

It becomes apparent that prior to the 1920s, the Lebanese immigrants in Kano predominantly belonged to the Maronite Christian community. It is only after this period that a demographic shift occurs, welcoming the arrival of Muslim Lebanese, particularly those of the Shiite sectarian extraction hailing from southern Lebanon. The book exposes the reader to the sociocultural intricacies of the Lebanese community’s towns of origin and unravels the fabric of their society, dispelling prevailing myths.

The entire Lebanese migration into Kano is thoughtfully categorised into four distinct phases, each meticulously explored with great detail: 1890-1903, 1903-1912, 1912-1920, and the 1930s during the tumultuous period of the great depression. Each of these phases represents a significant milestone in the history of the Lebanese community within Kano, as well as its impact on the city’s socioeconomic development.

Subsequent chapters of this book delve into the physical establishment of the Lebanese community, intricately entwined with crucial historical policies such as colonial taxation, the indirect rule system, and segregation policies.

Chapters four, five, and six embark on an exciting journey, covering the consolidation of the Lebanese community within Kano’s vibrant business milieu. From the thriving cattle trade to the realms of Kolanut and groundnut businesses, the book unfurls the profound influence of factors like colonial intervention, the upheaval of the Second World War, Nigeria’s independence, and the burgeoning national consciousness. The book has revelations of ground-breaking nature, leaving you enlightened and astounded, and for me, every piece seamlessly falls into place now.

By Abdullahi Haruna Kandash

In my opinion, Mayan Mata is one of the best series, if not the best movie ever produced in Kannywood. The movie portrays the vicious circle of poverty, a retinue of marriages, the mutilation of pregnant women and how children in society are raised with no regard for their futures.

Sadik Sani Sadik thinks nothing a man should be ashamed of if he bullies his wife. In the series, his pregnant wife faces a crisis despite her pregnancy. Unfortunately, they lost the child by miscarriage. Jamila Nagudu experiences petty humiliation after her one and only child is taken to Almajiranci. Daso’s son is a nasty disciple, too, a spoiled one. He was taken to Almajiranci when he was a child. He follows the gang and gets spoiled.

The movie portrays what really sabotages relationships, couples and children’s futures. The best part of this movie tells us that there are people in society with more clout who show no concern for other children and other women whose lives have been shattered by the cruelty of their spouses. I became truly interested in the movie after I watched some episodes. And I have seen many things that happen in real life portrayed in the movie. The director has done a wonderful job.

Kannywood should continue to bring cultural identities into its movies. The director also depicts literature, art and culture in the movie, and all these can be vividly seen in the different scenes of the film. Literature, art and culture are not something we can simply despise. They are like the air we breathe. And If we cut them off, the whole world will suffer.

Literature has enormously helped so many movies to gather an audience because of its literariness. Manyan Mata pictures exactly what is happening in our communities nowadays. It shows how parents treat their children with contempt. The director shows us how our societies are sliding backwards and experiencing immaturity.

But the best part of it, however, is that it teaches us how to understand the beauty of humanity, that everyone’s life matters.

Fati Washa experiences a worst-case scenario with her deceased mother’s co-wife. After watching the scene where her mother’s co-wife was trying to burn her schoolbooks rudely, I sensed that the movie is trying to tell us that societies that achieve better prosperities are those where huge investments are made in education. These are societies where every child is allowed to go to school to learn. This part also attempts to show us that every child should have access to education so that just and egalitarian societies can be built.

I hope the director will continue to fight inequality and bring sameness because that is what brings safety, security and a sense of belonging among people.

By Zee Aslam

The door slammed open to reveal a heart-touching moment of a mother struggling to discover her breath as she aimed to bring another life into the world. The birth of a baby is one of the world’s most wondrous and hazardous moments. 

Childbirth is a challenge, but it is undoubtedly one of life’s most rewarding events. As painful and fearsome as it may seem, the mother has this wonderful emotion overwhelming her as she awaits the arrival of her bundle of joy. 

Being a mother comes with lots of sacrifices. Your body figure will be altered, re-moulded, and your brain becomes addled as you are being re-programmed right from the womb swelling with pride down to experiencing the pain of labour. 

Pregnancy is exciting and scary all at the same time. Some days feel like a breeze, while others are just plain hard. However, the long nights with no sleep and mood swings are all worth it. 

Despite all the doctors, nurses, and loved ones in the room during childbirth, it is all about you, your body, and your child. It’s an incredible experience. It’s like uncovering a superpower you never realised you had. 

As she gasped for air while pushing out the baby, she looked around her and reminisced on the decision she took months back, which she never regretted once but still harboured doubts and fears. “What would become of this baby?” She asked herself. 

The cry of her little one signalled the beginning of a new life. She looked keenly as the nurse cleaned up her baby and placed him on her, wrapped in boundless passion. 

The aftermath of her decision just began. At night and when the hospital staff were distracted by an emergency, she stealthily sneaked out and walked miles away to a place where an orphanage was situated before dropping off the baby at the foot of a gate and then knocking at it. 

An elderly woman came out and was attracted to the baby’s cries. She stood halfway, staring at the innocent boy before she reduced her height and picked him up inside. The mother watching from afar, only wiped off tears as they streamed down her face. “That was the best she could do for her baby”. 

She travelled down memory lane to the path where some unknown men abducted, defiled and abused her. Then she thought she only paid the price of being an orphan roaming on the street, but now she knows better. 

Her life took a new turn and brought her to face its realities, she has just given away her soul and a piece of her heart to a total stranger, but she rests assured that her boy will grow up amidst other kids and be a better person. 

She calmly dragged her feet out of that street to what she called home and picked up the remnant from her shattered life, yearning to stitch them back together. 

If she could turn back the hands of time, she would. 

But since it’s beyond her control, she will only move on with her life and keep praying for the best to unfold into a piece. 

By Dansaleh Aliyu Yahya

After reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, this fictional story of a young boy created a river of tears in my gapes. The main character, Santiago, a young lad, dreams and believes that dreams come true when someone follows the way to see them awaken.

At first, he (the boy) taught us that travels were the greatest sources of knowledge, experience, and wisdom when he told his father that he wanted to become a shepherd because of the love he had for knowing the true nature of his world. Nevertheless, he sold his sheep and searched for his “Personal Legend” because he now realised it was more important than just rearing animals.

Throughout the story, we would learn that if the younger person needs to have a useful life, they must learn and believe the philosophy of their older ones. On his journey, Santiago met many good people.

In addition, each of them told him one or more essential facts about life and everything.  For example, he met a king named Melchizedek, who said, “ When you want something, all universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. I think this is the most important sentence in the book.

The books also taught us that we shouldn’t bother ourselves with our past but instead focus on our present to build a more fantastic future. He was told that when he concentrated on the present, he would always be happy. 

In his treasure search, the boy met a young woman called Fatima. They started loving each other, and he promised her he’d be back one day to marry her. There I remembered the Hausa Proverb that says, “ Garin masoyi baya nisa”. He was about to lose his treasure because of love, but the alchemist summoned him.

The story has a lot of must-be-learned philosophies that couldn’t be mentioned here due to their meanness, but I’ll try to pen down some of them below to build eagerness to read the book in those that didn’t read it. These ideologies include:

— “If you play cards the first time, you’re almost sure to win. It’s called beginners luck.”

— “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen the third time.”

— “Every day was there to be lived or mark one’s departure on one word ‘maktub’”.

— “If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.”

Let me stop here. However, if you have not read the book, you should look for it. I assure you, you won’t be the same person you were before reading it.

Dansaleh Aliyu Yahya can be contacted via dansalealiyu@gmail.com.

By Dr Shamsuddeen Sani

In a flurry of literary exploration, my daughter recently stumbled upon the book entitled Concubines and Power. Her curiosity was piqued as she asked me to explain the meaning of “concubine”. A seemingly simple inquiry prompted a deep and complex conversation encompassing a broad range of considerations about slavery, including its religious underpinnings and contemporary relevance.

That exchange reignited my intellectual curiosity, leading me to revisit the noteworthy insights presented in Jonathan AC Brown’s seminal work, Slavery and Islam. I was compelled to reflect on and share some of the most insightful revelations from this ground-breaking work.

The book meticulously examines the historical context and practice of slavery within the Islamic tradition, as well as the ways in which Islamic law and theology have addressed the institution of slavery. Brown argues that slavery was ubiquitous throughout much of human history and was not unique to Islam.

However, Brown also acknowledges that slavery played a significant role in the development of Islamic civilisation and that the Islamic legal tradition provided a framework for the regulation of slavery. He offers an insightful and nuanced perspective on this complex issue, providing valuable insights into the intersection of religion and human rights.

Brown’s book highlights a fundamental premise: the Islamic tradition’s nuanced and intricate approach to slavery. On the one hand, Islamic law allowed for the practice of slavery; on the other, it imposed stringent limitations on how slaves could be treated and offered opportunities for manumission. According to Brown, these regulations illustrate a deep-seated concern for the well-being of slaves and a profound appreciation of their inherent human dignity.

At the same time, Brown acknowledges that there were significant abuses of the institution of slavery within Islamic societies. For example, he notes that some Muslim scholars and rulers sought to justify and perpetuate the practice of slavery through a misinterpretation of Islamic teachings and that many slaves were subjected to inhumane treatment.

He argues that while there are certainly instances of slavery and human trafficking that occur in Muslim-majority countries, these practices are not inherently Islamic and are often the result of broader social and economic factors.

By Saifullahi Attahir

It’s not surprising that nowadays you see my post regularly. I’m always looking forward to moments like this where  I get released from the yolk of sleep-inducing medical books. Once again, I’m lucky to be surrounded by my favourite literature I  enjoy which serves as a source of enlightenment, happiness, experience, and loyal and non-disturbing companionship.

This week I luckily came across a 362 pages novel written by a great and rare literary icon, Chinua Achebe, who needs no introduction. Dr Achebe was born around the 1930s in pre-independence Nigeria. He witnessed the early struggle of our nation with colonial amalgamation, premature political activities, and half-baked western knowledge. He was also blessed to witness the coup and the counter-coups, the civil war, the many long military juntas, and various democratic regimes. He died around 2013. what a long journey!

My respect for Achebe began when I discovered his early taste in Medicine (MBBS) at the University before switching to the Humanities. This is obvious in his surgical approach to writing and his simple use of words to convey a powerful message resembling a patient-doctor relationship in a way that no other can. Achebe is a political philosopher with all the tools to delve into politics (being famous, a great orator, experienced, a historian, and knowledgeable, of course, without the money) but decided to steer himself away from remaining a true nationalist.

The book, Man of the people, was so captivating that I couldn’t stop reading it until I was done in less than three days. How it related events in the early 1950s political arena to how it is in the present moment shows me that history is often a cyclical process with only names and dates that tend to change a little. This struck me with a reality that humans, despite our self-acclaim superior intelligence, are sometimes unfortunate gullible creatures that hardly learnt lessons from their past mistakes or the mistakes of others. This is more so true as today we rarely like to read history. Below is my take off from the book:

Chief Honourable Nanga is regarded in our settings as a wise and lucky few who was previously a low waged primary school teacher before finding his way into politics in the newly independent country. He was elected as a parliamentarian to represent his local people, who were mostly less literate in books than he was. Before his political adventure, Nanga was simple, intelligent, respectful, and friendly. All the mentioned attributes earned him the automatic approval of his people to represent them.

Of course, they weren’t wrong. Chief Nanga continues to be available to his people because he was a person you could describe as ‘let us eat together’. The main concern of his people was to bring them something to their mouths, not tangible and economically sustained programs. This automatically makes Chief Nanga the person whose main concern was to butcher the ‘national cake’ to satisfy his people and at least secure their approval for the next election round.

Chief Nanga was nominated a National Minister of Culture by the Prime Minister for his unquestionable ‘loyalty’ to the party and its leadership. The loyalty was nothing more than his ability to see wrongdoings and remains silent. Transgressions include high inflation, dashing money to party members, over-estimated contracts, sub-optimal road projects, conspicuous import duties, debt-ridden economic policies, debilitating educational reform, and countless more.

In exchange for his loyalty Chief Nanga was assured 10% of every project he was given, a 7-bedroom self-contained house, ten newly designed buses for his next election campaign, a  newly 2-storey mansion in his village hometown Anata, a new Cadillac car, and four security bodyguards. Remember that this was 1960’s politics!

In the story, there was an incident of some members of Parliaments who were not loyal to this dirty scheme of ‘party politics’ and stood their ground to expose all these scandalous affairs. Their fate was that the newspapers, magazines, and media outlets were being bought up (bribed) to write news regarding a coup plot arranged by those patriotic citizens who were later dismissed and imprisoned. At this juncture, I noticed that it’s true that news from some media outlets sometimes has some aspects of interest, either being compromised financially or for personal benefit. This required a separate article on its own.

It’s a rule of life that such activities can never continue unnoticed. Therefore a group of young, overzealous, and enlightened University graduates, some of whom were already practising in various sectors, including lawyers, doctors, teachers, and engineers led by  Max (a lawyer) and Odili (a teacher)  gathered to form a political party or rather a revolutionary movement to counter the activities of Chief Nanga’s Government. After various arrangements and meetings, they began launching their campaign. They were able to display every tactic to draw the attention of the common men and women in the country.

To cut the story short, these zealous young men were, to some level, unsuccessful in their mission; as the system began to unfold, it seemed a very complex situation where the very people they were shouting to rescue were the very culprit supporting the corruption. Those masses see the politician as saviours whose role is to go and bring them their share of the ‘national cake’ bounty because they do not view it as their right or National asset that deserves preservation up to their unborn generation.

The problem is that the same common masses are responsible for encouraging the leaders to do the vices. The common masses are the vanguards (‘yan jangaliya), the bodyguards, the local party chairman, and the man who complained of Kola-nut for his daughter’s marriage. The same masses would first laugh at him (elected politician)  after one year when he resigned from office without amassing something. Then, they would laugh at him that now he had become a  pauper, so this automatically creates the intrinsic urge to loot.

During the election campaign, Max lost his life after being attacked by those unfortunate vanguards, and  Odili sustained injuries, while his nomination paper didn’t even reach the electoral office as it was confiscated by corrupt Police. Chief Nanga’s party were ‘elected’ unopposed through massive ballot rigging and political hullabaloo. Fortunately, the country was saved by a military coup that overthrew Chief Nanga’s government.

The rest is history.

Saifullahi Attahir wrote from Dutse wrote via saifullahiattahir93@gmail.com.

By Zee Aslam

“Bring him in and untie his eyes”, he heard a female voice snarling in the background. He tried recalling where he had heard that voice before, but it did not sound familiar to him at all. 

He looked around and saw that he was in a deserted building, there were sharp instruments everywhere, and the smell of fresh blood originated from a corner. She stood up from her chair and walked to where he was sitting with his hands tied to his feet. Before he could say a word, she had chopped off two of his fingers and whipped him severally. Then, mixed together different liquids in a bottle and handed it over to him. 

“Gulp it down, or I smash your head”, her thunderous voice echoed across the four walls. 

He couldn’t lift a finger, and his body kept trembling in fear, so she collected the bottle and emptied it down his throat. He had lost the surviving strength running through his limbs. Hence, he couldn’t retaliate nor attempt to stop her. 

“I want to watch you die slowly, shred your body into pieces and feed it to the vultures. I want the pains you inflicted on me to manifest on you before your death. That way, I will feel fulfilled”. After these words left her mouth, she picked up the knife from the table and took a few steps forward till she could hear his heart beating heavily.

“Open your mouth”, she ordered. 

“Please, have mercy on me”. He said amidst sobs. 

“Ohh wow, do you remember when I said these words too, or were you so engulfed in your selfishness that you couldn’t lend me a listening ear, you were man enough to take control notwithstanding the aftermath of your greed, right? It’s time to pay for your debt”. With this, she beckoned her boys to forcefully open his mouth while she slit part of his tongue.

“Now, swallow it, or I will proceed to slit your throat”, she bellowed dropping the piece she had cut off in his mouth. He collapsed, groaning with pain as blood streamed down his throat. 

“Get a bucket of water from the freezer and pour it all over him”. 

He dumbly opened his eyes and glimpsed at her angry figure, he wanted to speak, but words deserted his mouth, and the pain emanating from his cut couldn’t let him move his tongue. Not in a thousand years would he have imagined this happening to him. He had scaled through so many times; why is this particular victim a thorn in his flesh, does this mean his end is here after all? 

“Are you reminiscing on what had transpired between us”? Her voice jolted him back to reality. 

“After you left me almost lifeless on the street that day, I swore to make you pay for what you did. I had my boys trace your whereabouts and even gathered some information about you. That was when I learnt that society doesn’t need people like you; rapists deserve to rot in hell. But wait, don’t you have a conscience at all, how can you knock down random girls just to rape them, how on earth? I mean, why do we have to share the same earth with you all?”. She spoke in great anger. 

“Make him stand”, she ordered. 

The boys unfastened his hands and feet, then held him side by side till he was up. Staring at the sharp edge of the blade, his heart sank. 

“Why do I smell fear, are you curious to know what I intend to do with the blade?”. She asked with bittered smiles written all over her face. He only nodded. 

“Strip him off his clothes. Let’s get started”. She uttered quickly and authoritatively. His body sensated to every move she made, but he couldn’t help it. 

With tears in his eyes, he watched as she cut off his sexual organ. His wails were arrested by tying a gag around his mouth. It was a dreadful and sickening sight to behold. After going through severe agony, he was whipped to death and thrown out. His bloodied body was found in a public toilet the next day. 

That morning, her attention was called to the awful scene by a large number of a crowd she had seen along her way to the office. Many people who have seen or heard of what had befallen him had mixed feelings. Among the crowd were some of his victims. Seeing this predator lying in the pool of his own blood in this state made them feel gratified. 

She curved the corners of her mouth and flashed her most winning smile. She has finally put an end to the game he started. 

Zee Aslam can be reached via zeeaslam19059@gmail.com.

By Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD

On Friday, March 3rd, 2023, I attended two events at the Divinity School. The first was a lecture convened by Professor Ousmane Kane, and the second was a joint symposium called the Zaytuna-Harvard Symposium. These two events shared similarities in that they both aimed to highlight the intellectual heritage of sub-Saharan Africa in various fields of knowledge and the importance of traditional means of knowledge acquisition.

The former was a presentation by Ustadh Umar Sheikh Tahir, the son of a prominent Nigerian scholar Sheikh Tahir Bauchi and a current PhD candidate at Columbia University. His presentation was titled “Rediscovering 18th Century Knowledge Tradition: Alkashinawi’s (d.1742) Intellectual Networks in Bilad Al-Sudan and Hijaz.” The latter was a presentation by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College, who spoke on “The Arts of Understanding Prerequisites for Unlocking the Islamic Tradition.” Sheikh Hamza Yusuf studied traditionally with scholars in Mauritania, West Africa.

Ustadh Umar presented the story of Muhammad Alkashinawi, a West African scholar from today’s Katsina province in Northern Nigeria. Alkashinawi developed proficiency in Arabic language, logic, mathematics, and jurisprudence in West Africa. When he moved to Hijaz, his scholarship was acknowledged, and he became a respected scholar from whom society was learning. When he died in Egypt, he was buried in the cemetery of scholars. Alkashinawi’s story highlights the journey of a scholar whose intellectual depth was developed in West Africa and whose scholarship transcended geographical boundaries.

The uniqueness of Alkashinawi’s work was not as prominent as it should have been, and Ustadh Umar’s work is more relevant in that he is translating Alkashinawi’s book into English. Interestingly, some of Alkashinawi’s work is only available at Yale University, and his book was not borrowed from the library at Yale for 120 years until Ustadh Umar asked for it.

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf’s presentation highlighted the importance of traditional means of knowledge acquisition and how it translates into scholarship that transcends geographical boundaries. Both presentations mesmerised the audience, providing evidence that knowledge is a human heritage that belongs to those who work to acquire it. It is neither the monopoly of a region, ethnicity, nor race but a heritage that beautifies a society that values it.

During the symposium, I sat among the students of Zaytuna College. One of the students asked me where I was from, and I responded Nigeria. He then introduced me to one of his schoolmates from Texas, who was a descendant of Sheikh Uthman ibn Fodio. I found it interesting how the family of Uthman Dan Fodio crossed the Atlantic and still keeps the story of their genealogy intact.

Takeaway: Knowledge is a human heritage. It belongs to those who work to acquire it.

Muhammad Jameel Yusha’u, PhD, is a candidate for a Mid-Career Master’s in Public Administration at Harvard University, John F Kennedy School of Government. He can be reached via mjyushau@yahoo.com.

By Muhammad Muzzammil Bashir

Think of a moment when you once found yourself in a situation where you were either physically, spiritually, or emotionally stressed, or both, where you could not help but give in and submit to your predicament, and all of a sudden, a flash of thought crossed your mind of the consequences of your choices, inspiring you to become decisive in your fate and bear with the situation while looking forward to its end until you are free from it.

The book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is the story of a psychiatrist, Victor E. Frankl, and his life at the Nazi concentration camp, envisioning and inspiring his colleagues to find meaning for life ahead while enduring the horrendous experiences of the camp.

The book accounts his experiences together with those of his colleagues’ lives at the camp, the sacrifices, the crucifixion, and the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims, and of course, those who gave up on life and hope for a future; thus, they died less of lack of medicine or food than of lack of finding meaning or purpose to live for.

Frankl likened the experiences to assert that while we cannot avoid suffering, we can choose to learn how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move our lives towards a renewed purpose.

The author asserts that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, wealth, or power but rather a quest to find meaning in one’s life. He coined his ideas in theory called “logotherapy,” meaning that striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force. The force usually comes from three possible sources: work, love, and in courage during difficult times.

A purpose-driven life is one that is enveloped in finding meaning that the mind holds subconsciously to pursue no matter the circumstances one is in. Obstacles may delay I but cannot deter that mind from pursuing its course. Fankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a masterpiece in this field, written in simple terms to comprehend its message easily.

Muhammad Muzzammil Bashir can be contacted via mbashir199@yahoo.com.

By Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu

I first met Philip Jaggar in March 2008 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) when I was engaged as the cinematographer for a visit, mediated by the British Government, of Sheikh Dr Qaribullah Nasir Kabara of Kano, to various places in the UK, including the University of London.

While I knew of Jaggar (although never having met him before), the rest of the team was pleasantly surprised by his total command of the Hausa language (and inner city Kano Hausa at that) – and his absolute refusal to respond to any question except in Hausa. The SOAS meeting brought together an impressive list of scholars to receive Sheikh Qaribullah. These included Graham Furniss, Dmitry Bondarev (specialist on Hausa handwritten Warsh Qur’anic manuscripts of Hausaland) and Philip Jaggar himself. It was a very pleasant encounter, full of banter.

My next encounter with him was later in November 2008, when I was commissioned to deliver a lecture at the Universität Hamburg. Jaggar had taught at the university, and I was honoured he attended my public lecture. Only two meetings, but he treated me like a long-lost friend, despite the eleven-year age gap between us. I was also elated when he told me of his interest in my works which at that time were beginning to gain traction in media and cultural studies. It was our last meeting, but very memorable for me due to his simplicity, love for Kano and absolute devotion to Hausa studies. He taught at Bayero University Kano from 1973-1976 and had pleasant memories of his experiences.

Jaggar’s most famous and highly acclaimed book is simply titled Hausa (John Benjamins, 2001). It was considered a classic comprehensive reference grammar of the Hausa language spread over sixteen chapters which together provide a detailed and up-to-date description of the core structural properties of the language in theory-neutral terms, thus guaranteeing its ongoing accessibility to researchers in linguistic typology and universals.

While Jaggar, or Malam Bala as he preferred to be addressed when he was in Kano, was known for his immense contributions to Hausa grammar, I interfaced with his work on the ‘maƙera’/blacksmith industry of Kano. Jaggar was the first to provide a comprehensive study of the blacksmith industry in Kano. His landmark book, The Blacksmiths of Kano City: A Study in Tradition, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Twentieth Century (Rüdiger Köppe, Cologne 1994), brought out the honour, dignity, creativity, aesthetics and the technology of the metalworking industry in the heart of Africa. The blurb of the book summarizes this amazing work:

“The present book examines the factors involved in the expansion, during the colonial and post-colonial periods, of a traditional pre-European craft. It discusses the art of blacksmithing in Kano City, northern Nigeria, and its eventual conversion into a modern metalworking industry. In doing so, it challenges the widely-held and simplistic assumption that such traditional professions declined before the economic and technological onslaught of colonialism.”

For me, the book provides a fascinating and ethnographic picture of the industrialization of the inner core city where I spent the early years of my life. It vividly brought to life the alleyways, the people and the entrepreneurial focus of the various wards in the city. This alone is enough to endear a reader to the book, even without the fascinating focus on the blacksmithing industry. I was able to snatch a copy in a bookstore at the University of Maiduguri in 2003 at ₦800 – barely 2€ now, but the publisher is currently selling it for 24€, about ₦12,000.

If, and only if, someone in the policy circles of the Kano State government of the day had taken note of the book, our maƙera would have received a boost and been incorporated into the development agenda of a national creating a synergy between its creative proto-industrialists and modernity.

When he celebrated his 75th birthday in 2020, many of his colleagues paid a lot of glowing tribute to him. Now that he has sadly passed away, those tributes remain etched in stone. He will be surely missed by hundreds of his colleagues and thousands of Hausa students who benefitted, directly or indirectly, from his extensive scholarship on the Hausa language.

Tribute to Philip Jaggar (2020)
https://study.soas.ac.uk/tributes-to-philip-j-jaggar/

About Philip Jaggar
https://study.soas.ac.uk/jaggar-hausa-champion-soas/

Various scenes with Phil Jaggar and the OP, as well as with Sheikh Dr Qaribullah Nasir Kabara’s team