Philip Jaggar

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