Concubines and Power

Kano's profile as a leading and prosperous city is common knowledge in African scholarship. However, the extent to which royal concubines of slave status contributed to the greatness of this ancient Nigerian city (especially in the pre-colonial era) remains one issue that has for too long been consigned to silence by most of the available works on the city. Heidi Nast's Concubines and Power is an outstanding contribution and a remarkably radical departure from previous works on the royal emirate because it highlights the pivotal roles of these concubines in the staging of social, political, and economic power in the city despite their apparently marginal position. This is also why the work will appeal to scholars and other prospective readers who are interested in the relationship between gender and power. This observation is underscored by the careful and systematic way in which the author highlights the various social, political, and economic roles played by these concubines in the palace. In the introduction concubinage is presented as ‘a formidable institution [which] has largely been ignored in scholarly accounts of state formational processes in Hausa land’ (p. xix) and it is argued that the grandeur of the monarchy in the city derived much prominence and vitality from the concubines.

Ancient history · Art · Greatness · Institution · Literature · Monarchy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law