A Historical Whodunit

The So-Called “Kano Chronicle” and its Place in the Historiography of Kano

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8091697
AutoresJohn Hunwick, John O Hunwick (Northwestern University, autor correspondente)
Ano1994
Volume21
Páginas127-146
Data de publicação1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistory in Africa (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3171883
OpenAlexW2093510214
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas4

Murray Last obliquely suggests that [the “Kano Chronicle”] is best regarded as a rather free compilation of local legends and traditions drafted in the mid-seventeenth century by a humorous Muslim rationalist who almost seems to have studied under Levi-Strauss. The danger lies in being carried away by one's own ingenuity. The question of the authorship and date(s) of writing of the so-called “Kano Chronicle” (KC) and hence how historians should evaluate it as a source, have intrigued students of Kano (and wider Hausa) history since the work was first translated into English by H. R. Palmer in 1908. Palmer himself had the following to say: The manuscript is of no great age, and must on internal evidence have been written during the latter part of the decade 1883-1893; but it probably represents some earlier record which has now perished....The authorship is unknown, and it is very difficult to make a guess. On the one hand the general style of the composition is quite unlike the “note” struck by the sons of Dan Hodio [ʿUthmān b. Fūdī, Abdulahi and Muḥammad Bello, and imitated by other Fulani writers. There is almost complete absence of bias or partizanship.... On the other hand, the style of the Arabic is not at all like that usually found in the compositions of Hausa mallams of the present day; there are not nearly enough “classical tags” so to speak, in it.... That the author was thoroughly au fait with the Kano dialect of Hausa is evident from several phrases used in the book, for instance “ba râyi ba” used in a sense peculiar to Kano of “perforce.” The original may perhaps have been written by some stranger from the north who settled in Kano, and collected the stories of former kings handed down by oral tradition

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