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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
When Caliph Attahiru of Sokoto chose flight over submission to the British in March 1903, it was left to the blind and aging Waziri, Muhammad al-Bukhari, to provide those who remained behind with an explanation of how they could remain good Muslims while accepting infidel rule. Citing a text of the caliphate's founder, Shehu ʿUthman Dan Fodio, he argued that one could befriend the British with the tongue, without befriending them with the heart. It remained for others to develop the vocabulary that their tongues would need for this task.
A particularly intriguing item in the vocabulary that emerged during the turbulent first decade of colonial rule was a new usage of zaman(time, era) that occurs in the records of the Emir of Kano's judicial council in such terms as hukm al-zaman (rule of the era) and ʿumur al-zaman (things of the era). It is worth noting that the judicial council did not keep written records before being instructed to do so by British Resident C.L. Temple in 1909, so the records might be seen as preserving what was essentially oral discourse—expressions of the tongue. These terms occur uniquely in relation to legal matters in which the British had intervened. Understanding them can shed new light on the religious and political adaptation of northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to life under British rule. To explore their meaning requires a threefold process of examining various usages and understandings of zaman in non-legal sources; describing how the judicial council used the word; and then analyzing how this usage may have been related to any of a number of influences, ranging from British officials to West African Islamic scholars to Western-educated North Africans passing through the region.
1. Adeleye, R. A., “The Dilemma of the Wazir: the Place of the Risalat al-wazir ‘ila ahl al-ʿilm wa'l-tadabbur in the History of the Conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 4 (1968), 285–311.Google Scholar
2. Christelow, Allan, Thus Ruled Emir ʿAbbas: Selected Cases from the Emir of Kano's Judicial Council (East Lansing, 1994).Google Scholar
3. The different roles of oral and written discourse in the Sokoto Caliphate need further exploration. If John Hunwick is correct in his contention that the Kano Chronicle was only committed to writing during the reign of Muhammad Bello in the 1880s, one could argue that efforts to use writing to stabilize political institutions began shortly before the arrival of the British. See “Not Yet The Kano Chronicle: King-lists With and Without Narrative Elaboration From Nineteenth Century Kano,” Sudanic Africa, 4 (1993), 95–130.Google Scholar C.L. Temple was assiduous in his efforts to promote written records: see Lovejoy, Paul, Mahadi, Abdullahi, and Mukhtar, Mansur Ibrahim, “C.L. Temple's ‘Notes on the History of Kano’ (1909): a Lost Chronicle of Political Office,” Sudanic Africa, 4 (1993), 7–76.Google Scholar
4. See Massignon, Louis, “Le temps dans la pensée islamique” in Parole Donné (Paris, 1983), 319–26.Google Scholar
5. An additional reason for such neglect was that the British and French colonial administrations in West Africa did not share their “intelligence” on Islamic matters until the early 1950s. See “Rapport de mission éffectuée en Nigeria en mars 1952 par M. l'Adminstrateur Magnin, Chef du Bureau des Affaires Musulmanes, Afrique Occidentale Française,” Public Record Office, London, CO 554/744.
6. On Sufi ideas and terms see Brenner, Louis, West African Sufi: the Religious Heritage and Spiritual Search of Cerno Bokar Saalif Taal (Berkeley, 1984).Google Scholar Charles Stewart has emphasized that those who study Muslim West Africa should not isolate orthodox Islam and legal studies from Sufism for the same individuals are often highly proficient in both domains. See his Islam and Social Order in Mauritania (Oxford, 1973).Google Scholar
7. For northern Nigeria such works include Tahir, Ibrahim, “Scholars, Saints, Sufis, and Capitalists in Kano, 1904-1974: the Pattern of a Bourgeois Revolution in an Islamic Society” (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1975)Google Scholar; Paden, John, Religion and Political Culture in Kano (Berkeley, 1973)Google Scholar; and Lubeck, Paul, Islam and Urban Labor in Northern Nigeria: the Making of a Muslim Working Class (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar
8. See Allan Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir ʿAbbas, chapter 5. For details of the Basasa see Fika, Adamu Mohammed, The Kano Civil War and British Overrrule (Ibadan, 1978).Google Scholar
9. Paden, Religion and Political Culture.
10. Mischlich, Adam, Wörterbuch das Hausasprache (Berlin, 1906).Google Scholar My thanks to Neil Skinner for this reference.
11. Rev. Bargery, G.P., A Dictionary of the Hausa Language (Oxford, 1934), pp. 1126–27.Google Scholar
12. Abraham, R.C., A Dictionary of the Hausa Language (2d. ed.: London, 1962).Google Scholar
13. Ferguson, D.E., “Nineteenth Century Hausaland, Being a Description by Imam Imoru of the Land, Economy, and Society of its People” (Ph.D., UCLA, 1973), chapter 1.Google Scholar
14. For a full bibliography see Reichmuth, Stefan, “Imam Umaru's Account of the Origins of the Ilorin Emirate,” Sudanic Africa, 4 (1993), 155–56.Google Scholar
15. Granguillaume, Gilbert, “Les conflits de l'arabisation,” Maghreb Review, 10 (1985), 57.Google Scholar
16. Hiskett, Mervyn, “Kitab al-farq: a Work on the Habe Kingdoms Attributed to ʿUthman Dan Fodio.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 23 (1960), 569.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is worth noting that adat, or local custom, a legal concept frequently invoked in Muslim areas of Southeast Asia, is scarcely mentioned.
17. Gidado was appointed waziri in the wake of a prolonged crisis provoked by the British Resident's appointment of Allah Bar Sarki, a royal slave to the office. On this episode, see Fika, Kano Civil War, chapter 5.
18. See Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir ʿAbbas, chapter 11.
19. Tahir, , “Scholars,” 324Google Scholar, reports a popular song circulating in Kano with a line that went “Nazarenes, you are a long time in coming.” The implication was that corruption and oppression reached such a point that Kano needed the Christian scourge. The theme is similar to that of Tijani arguments in Algeria at the time of the French conquest. It also bears a clear resemblance to Imam ʿUmar's “Wa'kar Annasara,” discussed below. On the perceived decline in moral standards see also Said, Halil, “Revolution and Reaction: the Fulani Jihad and its Aftermath” (PhD., University of Michigan, 1978).Google Scholar
20. There is an interesting comparison here with Bohannan's analysis of Tiv anti-witchcraft movements. While Kano Muslims were concerned with judging the legitimacy of power in terms of Islamic law, the Tiv, living in a stateless society before colonial rule, had a notion of personal power, or tsav, and they judged whether such power was illegitimate or excessive. British colonial institutionalization of authority stimulated periodic outbreaks of “anti-witchcraft” movements which can be seen as protests against illegitimate power. Untimely deaths in particular tended to stimulate accusations of “witchcraft,” or, in Tiv terms, illegitimate tsav. See Bohannan, Paul, “Extra-Processual Events in Tiv Political Institutions,” American Anthropologist, 60 (1958), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. Jadid (Arabic) and sabo (Hausa) were used in connection to familiar objects that were fresh or of recent provenance, not innovations. In Islamic terminology what is new in the sense of being unprecedented (bid ʿa) can be suspected of being religiously unsound.
22. At the outset of the colonial era, Europeans were sometimes referred to as Nasara, or Christians. But the term Turawa (Europeans) rapidly gained currency. There may have been a religious argument behind the choice. It was easier to justify submitting to conquerors described by an ethnic term than to ones acknowledged to be Christian. By a similar token, North Africans popularly referred to the French as rumi, or “Roman.” Indeed, the Hausa Turawa may have been derived from this usage. A Hausa speaker, asking a North African Arabic speaker where the “land of the Romans” was would have been told it was around Istanbul (Rumelia or, in Arabic, bilad al-rum). This would have led to a natural confusion between Turks and Europeans.
23. Tahir, , “Scholars,” 372.Google Scholar
24. See, for instance, Chenoufi, Ali, Un savant tunisien du XIXe siècle: Muhammad al-Sanusi, sa vie et son oeuvre (Tunis, 1977).Google Scholar Also, Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1789-1939 (Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar For a thoroughgoing discussion of ijtihad, or personal effort, see Commins, David Dean, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar
25. Adeleye, , “Dilemma,” 305.Google Scholar My translations differ in minor detail from those of Adeleye.
26. In Algeria it was common to refer to unprincipled scheming and plotting as shaytana.
27. Sura xv, 31-44; Sura vi, 11-18.
28. Temple fits the image only to a limited degree. As Mervyn Hiskett has pointed out, his views on economic and social questions were in many ways typical of the British left of his day, not of a romantic conservative. See Hiskett's, Mervyn Introduction to Charles Temple, Native Races and their Rulers: Sketches and Studies of Official Life and Administrative Problems in Nigeria (London, 1968).Google Scholar
29. Perham, Margery, Lugard: the Years of Authority, 1898-1945 (London, 1960), 216.Google Scholar
30. In Native Races and their Rulers, Temple gives the impression of having arrived in northern Nigeria a rather naive and guileless young man, but one who painfully learned the stratagems of local politics.
31. On al-Maghili, see Hunwick, John, Shariʿa in Songhay: the Replies of al-Maghili to the Questions of Askia al-Hajj Muhammad (Oxford, 1985), chapter 2.Google Scholar
32. It may well be that the religious realignment under ʿAbbas can be understood as the continuation of long-standing rivalries in Kano between a “Wangara” faction, which included the Sidi Fari, a descendant of al-Maghili, and a “Bornu” faction. See Last, Murray, “From Sultanate to Caliphate: Kano, 1450-1800” in Studies in the History of Kano, ed. Barkindo, Bawuro (Ibadan, 1983), 76–77.Google Scholar
33. Christelow, Allan, “Oral, Manuscript, and Printed Expressions of Historical Consciousness in Algeria,” Africana Journal, 15 (1990), 258–75.Google Scholar
34. Khodja, Hamdan, Le miroir: aperçu historique et statistique sur la régence d'Alger, ed. Djeghoul, Abdelkader (Paris, 1985[1833]).Google Scholar See also Muhammad Bin ʿAbd al-Karim. Hukm, al-hijra min khilal thalatha risa'il jaza'iriyya (The Issue of Emigration Through Three Algerian Letters) (Algiers, 1981).Google Scholar
35. See Christelow, Allan, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton, 1985), chapter 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36. Abun-Nasr, Jamil, The Tijaniyya: a Sufi Order in the Modern World (Oxford, 1965), 42.Google Scholar
37. B.G. Martin notes that the Tijanis subscribe to a vision of “alternating social decay and renewal.” Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa, (Cambridge, 1976), 96.Google Scholar
38. On this setting see Cigar, Norman, “Socio-Economic Structures and the Development of an Urban Bourgeoisie in Pre-Colonial Morocco,” Maghreb Review, 6/3–4 (1981), 55–76.Google Scholar
39. Berque, Jacques. “Le confrérisme et les lumières” in L'intérieur du Maghreb, XV-XIXe siècles (Paris, 1978), 268.Google Scholar
40. The concept of zaman does not seem to appear in the writings of al-Hajj ʿUmar or of his immediate successors. See, for instance, Hanson, John and Robinson, David, After the Jihad: the Reign of Ahmed al-Kabir in the Western Sudan (East Lansing, 1991).Google Scholar The apparent contradiction between Tijanis as activists and accommodationists may be resolved by their view of alternation between periods of decay and renewal.
41. The Satiru revolt of 1906 can probably be seen as the point of no return in the northern Nigerian elite's acquiescence to British rule. Further research is necessary to determine Ujidud's usage of zaman.
42. See Abun-Nasr, , Tijaniyya, 96-97, 176–77.Google Scholar Cf. Paden, , Religion and Political Culture, 83Google Scholar; and Magnin, “Rapport.”
43. Paden, , Religion and Political Culture, 82–84.Google ScholarTahir, . “Scholars,” 341.Google Scholar
44. Through the early 1880s French officials in Algeria had nurtured hopes that the reputedly pro-French Tijaniyya could help them penetrate the Sahara. Events such as the massacre of the Flatters mission suggested that these hopes were poorly founded. The policy of favoring the Qadiriyya seems to have originated in southern Tunisia and adjacent Saharan regions of Algeria. On Deporter, see Frémaux, Jacques, “Victor-Benjamin Deporter,” Parcours: l'Algérie, les hommes et l'histoire, 10 (December 1988), 15–27.Google Scholar On the French in Mauritania see Harrison, Christopher, France and Islam in West Africa, 1860-1960 (Cambridge, 1988), 20–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Abun-Nasr, , Tijaniyya, 105–06.Google Scholar On French dealings with Sufi orders in the Tunisian and eastern Algerian Sahara see Smith, Julia Clancy, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, and Colonial Encounters, Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904 (Berkeley, 1994).Google Scholar
45. Lubeck, , Islam and Urban Labor, 36Google Scholar, contends that the Kano merchant elite followed a policy of resistance to imperialism, to be contrasted to the collaborationist position of the office holding elite. Yet if one takes into consideration the theft compensation rule, it seems clear that the merchant elite were in a precarious position, and needed British support to minimize the depredations of the political elite.
46. Germano-Turkish influence, in conjunction with the Sanusiyya reached into the central Sahara, as far as Agades, during the World War I, but had no impact in northern Nigeria. See Fuglestad, Finn, A History of Niger, 1850-1960 (Cambridge, 1983), 95–100.Google Scholar
47. Paden, , Religion and Political Culture, 89.Google Scholar
48. Christelow, Thus Rule Emir ʿAbbas, chapter 5, Case 155 F. A man named al-Hasan reclaimed the house of his father, Muhammad, in Goronduma ward. A witness for his claim was the Sarkin Agalawa, or head of the Agalawa traders. The identification cannot be certain, for Lovejoy, Paul, Caravans of Kola (Zaria, 1980), 90Google Scholar, gives the name of al-Hasan Dantata's father as Audu. But he notes that al-Hasan Dantata returned to Kano from Ghana at about this time.
49. See Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir ʿAbbas, chapter 4, Case 86 D. Ibrahim of Aba Kakume ward had gone to Kumasi and had left his house in trust twenty-one years earlier, and the trustee had illegally sold it. Ibrahim's departure from Kano coincides with the Basasa. This case occurred before the first judgment returning property confiscated in the Basasa.
50. See Christelow, Thus Ruled Emir ʿAbbas, chapter 10.
51. There is evidence in the records that this insecurity was connected with the weakening of the bonds of slavery in the early colonial period. Precisely how the merchant elite exerted pressure for the theft compensation rule is not clear. Since the cases are classed as hukm al-zaman, it is reasonable to assume that the British pressured ‘Abbas to implement such a rule. Wealthy merchants’ acceptance of compensation demonstrates their support for the rule.
52. Ibid., chapter 10, Case 117 E. In this case, it is reported that the same thief stole large sums from merchants at two separate locations in Kofar Mazugil and Darma wards, on the same night.
53. In the case of Fas, Islamic scholars issued a number of fatwas, or legal opinions, that directly or indirectly condemned trade with non-Muslims: see Cigar, , “Socio-Economic Structures,” 67–68.Google Scholar Kano lacks a tradition of written fatwa literature, but the Kano mallams could certainly issue oral ones, and some of them may have been familiar with the Moroccan fatwas or similar ones of other provenance.
54. Hogendorn, Jan, Nigerian Groundnut Exports: Origins and Development (Zaria, 1978).Google Scholar Among factors facilitating the success of these new traders was their access to urban land, where they could establish their own new physical facilities for trade. Their facilities were in the newly created area of Fagge Ta Kudu, or South Fagge, located just outside the city walls, and near the railway station. If my own experience living there in the early 1980s is any indication, these facilities enjoyed remarkable security from theft.
55. Fika, , Kano Civil War, 223.Google Scholar
56. Kagara, Muhammadu Bello, Sarkin Katsina Alhaji Muhammadu Dikko, C.B.E. (The Emir of Katsina Alhaji Muhammadu Dikko) (Zaria, 1951), 73.Google Scholar
57. District Officer, Katsina to Resident Zaria, 3 November 1927, in National Archives, Kaduna, ZARPROF C. 4037.
58. District Officer, Katsina to Resident, Zaria, 25 November 1927, in National Archives, Kaduna, ZARPROF C. 4037. The replacement was Mallam Salihu, son of Mallam Abubakar Bakogayi.
59. Kagara, , Sarkin Katsina, 73.Google Scholar
60. Wilks, Ivor, Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana (Cambridge, 1989), 98–100.Google Scholar
61. Braimah, J. A. and Goody, Jack, Salaga: the Struggle for Power (London, 1967), 191.Google Scholar
62. On the Suwarian tradition see Wilks, , Wa and the Wala, 98–100.Google Scholar The Germans followed a policy of favoring Muslims in northern Togo similar to that of the British in northern Nigeria. See Delval, Raymond, Les musulmans au Togo (Paris, 1980), 22–23.Google Scholar
63. Quoted in Hiskett, Mervyn, The Development of Islam in West Africa (London, 1984), 265.Google Scholar For the full text see Pilaszewicz, Stanislaw, “The Arrival of the Christians: a Hausa Poem on the Colonial Conquest of West Africa by Al-Haji ʿUmaru,” Africana Bulletin, no. 22 (1975), 55–129.Google Scholar
64. Lovejoy, , Caravans of Kola, 95.Google Scholar
65. H.R. Palmer to Secretary, Northern Provinces, 18 December 1923, in Lethem Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford.
66. On this period, see Tahir, , “Scholars,” 357–58.Google Scholar Imam ʿUmar also became disillusioned with the Europeans in the post-World War I era.
67. Jabari provided his French superiors with a written narrative of his travels, and later had a moment of notoriety when he issued in public a claim to have seen survivors of the 1881 Flatters mission. This Masaʿud Bin al-Jabari may well be the same as one who was arrested in 1881 for allegedly attempting to stir up resistance against the French invasion of Tunisia. See Kanya-Forstner, A.S., “French Missions to the Central Sudan in the 1890s: the Role of Algerian Agents and Interpreters,” Paideuma, 40 (1994), 15–35Google Scholar; and Christelow, Allan, “Algerian Interpreters and the French Colonial Adventure in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Maghreb Review, 10 (1985), 101–06.Google Scholar
68. For details see Christelow, “Algerian Interpreters.”
69. Fodio, ʿUthman Dan, Nur al-albab, trans. Hamet, Ismael (Algiers, 1898).Google Scholar
70. Most notably Rajim Bin Saʿid, who served under Gentil in the conquest of Chad. See Triaud, Jean-Louis, “Les relations entre la France et la Sanusiyya (1840-1930)” (Thèse du doctoral d'état, Université de Paris VIII, 1991), chapter 29.Google Scholar
71. al-Hasani, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Abi Talib, Rawdat al-akhbar wa nuzhat al-afkar (The Garden of News and the Stroll through Ideas) (Algiers, 1901).Google Scholar On the quasi-religious aspects of international expositions at this time, see Rydell, Robert, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar
72. Saʿadallah, Bilqasim, “Khutba Ibn al-Mawhubʿ and tawliyatihi al-fatwa bi-Qusuntina,” (The Sermon of Ibn al-Mawhub on his Appointment to the Muftiship of Constantine), in Abhath wa ara' fi ta'rikh al-Jaza'ir (Research and Opinions in the History of Algeria) (Algiers, 1986), 2:198.Google Scholar
73. The key link to Islamic reform was ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Majjawi, who studied in Damascus, then returned to Algeria to teach first at the médersa of Constantine, then that of Algiers. He was part of the same circle as Ahmad Ibn Abi Talib, and Isma'il Hamet, the translator of Nur al-albab.
74. The Jabari who was arrested in 1881 was working as a railway stationmaster.
75. The most eminent progressive figure in Northern Nigeria, Mallam Aminu Kano, taught his students at Bauchi Middle School in the 1940s an English language poem called “Song of the Changing Times.” The poem advocated social and moral reform, but at the same time pride in one's history and culture. See Feinstein, Alan, African Revolutionary: the life and Times of Nigeria's Aminu Kano (New York, 1973), 82.Google Scholar A term widely used to describe the transition to independence from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s was zamanin siyasa, the era of politics.
76. Denunciation of the moral laxity of the new era can be found especially in the writings of Mawlud Ibn al-Mawhub, who served as mufti of Constantine from the 1890s until the 1930s. See Sa'adallah, “Khutba Ibn al-Mawhub.” Clear echoes of Imam ʿUmar can be found in the oral traditions recorded in Algeria just before the World War I: see Christelow, “Expressions.”
