Hausa

The term “Hausa” refers to a language spoken by over thirty million first-language speakers living mainly in the region now comprising northern Nigeria and southern Niger, with large Hausa-speaking enclaves in northern Cameroon, Ghana, Togo, and the Sudan. This term is also commonly used to refer to the society that speaks this language. However, historically Hausa society has been so internally diverse that it would be preferable to speak of “Hausa-speaking societies”: “It is almost impossible to say exactly what a Hausa is now, for he is admittedly a mixture of mixtures” (Tremearne 1911) Until the early-20th-century researchers of Hausaphone societies tended to distinguish between Muslim and “pagan” Hausa, with the latter comprising groups collectively labeled Maguzawa (northern Nigeria) and Azna, Arna, or Anna (southern Niger). Throughout the 20th century a regional process of Islamization resulted in the marginalization of non-Muslim and syncretic religious practices. Only a small minority of Hausa converted to Christianity. Political anthropologists distinguished between, on one hand, dynastic Hausa, politically centralized groups settled in the main Hausa cities, and on the other hand, lineage-based Hausa: farming communities living in the countryside. In the early 21st century these classifications are slowly becoming obsolete as all Hausa speakers are integrated in national political structures, and young people with rural origins gravitate toward large urban centers within and outside Africa in search of jobs and resources. While the literature on Hausa history, societies, and cultures in northern Nigeria is voluminous and primarily English, studies of Hausaphone southern Niger are fewer and mainly in French.