Nana Asma'u, her elegies and the possibility of ‘insider alternatives’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18990100 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nikki Merritt (a Horizons Mondiaux, Ouagadougou, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 91-99 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Languages and Cultures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0954-416X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09544169408717779 |
| OpenAlex | W2029963366 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
Nana Asma'u (1793-1865), a daughter of the Sokoto jihad, wrote prolifically and with considerable impact within the Islamic community of Usman dan Fodio. This community was to change radically the religious and social formation of Hausaland. The jihad at the beginning of the nineteenth century imprinted Islam upon mainstream Hausa culture and brought it in from the margins. Asma'u was an eyewitness to the genesis and development of the movement, and her poetry in Fulfulde, Arabic and Hausa provides a vivid insight into the thoughts and debates that occupied its leadership. Within the corpus of her literature some of the most beautiful moments of self-expression are to be found in the elegies and it is on this genre that I wish to focus. I intend to consider the poetic agenda the elegies suggest as representative of her work as a whole, and then to concentrate upon the ideology they contain and create about women. It is tempting to enter the work through the fascinating and rich history that surrounds its production, but I feel it is more appropriate to begin from the specific qualities of her language and style. Choosing as starting point the elegy Alhinin Mutuwa included in Aisha Ahmed's anthology (Ahmed 1981: 17), we can describe her literary style in Hausa. The language is simple and direct with a high occurrence of Sakkwatanci dialect words and forms; Ahmed observes that Arabic loanwords are less frequent in Asma'u's work than in that of other jihadic writers. In conjunction with her choice of subject matter and the references the poems contain to their purpose and intended audience, these characteristics point to the two major dynamics that inform her writing. First her didactic intention: the simplicity of the language and indeed the decision to write in Hausa at all rather than the more prestigious literary or religious language, Arabic, give her poems an educational bias. This is apparent in the directives that make up the body of many of her poems. Wa'azu addresses a specifically female audience and gives them advice on how to live as good Muslims, including details of the permissible reasons for leaving the compound when in purdah; indeed, in closing the piece, Asma'u says 'this poem of admonition' has come to an end. Asma'u is by no means unique in this respect; Robinson (1982: 251) comments upon Hausa and Fulfulde texts written in Arabic script: Even where the volume of literature is small, they have pointed to the critical
Art · Elegiac · Elegy · Hausa · Ideology · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Mythology · Poetry · Political science · Politics · African Studies and Geopolitics · History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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