Abstract
Historical sources are not silent on the origin of Fanisau. According to one tradition collected by Yusuf Yunusa, the settlement was founded during Emir Ibrahim Dabo’s reign and was first settled by his “trusted slaves.”1 This view accords well with the assertion of the first European traveler, Clapperton, who visited Fanisau in the early 1820s, and who reported, “[After breakfast I accompanied Hat Salah, the sheikh’s agent, to the sansan, which, since it became a town, is also called Fanisoe.”2 Both of the above accounts, however, confuse the origin of the gandu sarauta and the early settlement of the sansan (fortified settlement/town)3, respectively, with the origin of Fanisau itself. These accounts that attribute a nineteenth-century origin to the settlement are late creations, after Fanisau became a plantation complex as well as a sansan. Such myths must have arisen as a reflection of the loyalty of the slaves (especially those at the gandun sarki) and their descendants to the emir.
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Notes
E. W. Bovill, ed., Missions to the Niger. Volume IV. The Bornu Mission 1822–25, Part III (London, Cambridge University Press, 1966), 646.
See Abdullahi Mahadi, “State and the Economy: The Sarauta System and It’s Roles in Shaping the Society and Economy of Kano with Particular Reference to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, 1982), 140–41; and Palmer, “Kano Chronicle,” in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 38, (1908): 63. It is interesting to note that a colonial administrative record, SNP KAN PRO 1/11/1, 1961–62: Ungogo History, also indicates that Fanisau was already in existence before the nineteenth century.
Palmer, “Kano Chronicle,” in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 38, (1908): 63.
For such reference, see Yusuf Yunusa, “Slavery in Nineteenth Century Kano,” (B. A. Essay, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 1976), 55.
Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, Gidan Rumfa: The Kano Palace (Kano, Triumph Publishing, 1995), 4.
Dahiru Yahaya, “Crisis and Continuity: Emirship of Kano in an Ideological Society,” paper presented at the Conference on the Role of Traditional Rulers in the Governance of Nigeria, organized by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, September 11–14, 1984.
Thurstan Shaw, Nigeria: Its Archaeology and Early History (London, Thames and Hudson, 1978), 163.
Bassey W. Es Andah, “An Archaeological View of the Urbanization Process in the Earliest West African States,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 8 (1976): 11.
Nasiru Ibrahim Dantiye, “Study of the Origins, Status and Defensive Role of Four Kano Frontier Strongholds (Ribats) in the Emirate Period (1809–1903),” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1985), 40.
See B.A.W. Trevallion, Metropolitan Kano Report on Twenty Year Development Plan 1963–1983 (London, Neame, 1967).
See M. J. Mortimore and J. Wilson, Land and People in the Kano Closed-Settled Zone: A Survey of Some Aspects of Rural Economy in the Ungogo District, Kano Province (Zaria, Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1965).
M. J. Mortimore, “Land and Population Pressure in the Kano Closed Settled Zone, Northern Nigeria,” Advancement of Science (1968): 677–86.
Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, Gidan Rumfa: The Kano Palace (Kano, Triumph Publishing, 1995), 28.
Adamu Mohammed Fika, The Kano Civil War and British Overrule 1882–1940 (Ibadan, Oxford University Press, 1978), 1.
For further information on the wet season and other geographical conditions in other regions of Nigeria, see R. K. Udo, Geographical Regions of Nigeria (Ibadan, Heinemann, 1971).
K. M. Buchanan and J. C. Pugh, Land and People in Nigeria: The Human Geography of Nigeria and its Environmental Background (London: University of London Press, 1966).
For further details on the soil type, see M. J. Mortimore, “Population Distribution, Settlement and soils in Kano Province, Northern Nigeria, 1931–62,” in John C. Caldwell and Chuka Okonjo, eds., The Population of Tropical Africa (New York, Columbia University Press, 1968), 298–306; Mahadi, “State and the Economy,” 68–77; and Mortimore and Wilson, Land and People, 4.
John E. Philips, “Ribats in the Sokoto Caliphate: Selected Studies, 1804–1903,” (Ph.D. dissertation University of California, 1992); and Dantiye, “Kano Frontier Strongholds,” are the two most significant works in this regard.
Ibrahim Ado-Kurawa, The Jihad in Kano (Kano, Kurawa Holdings, 1989), 51. It is important to note that Kazaure is a town in present-day Jigawa State.
M. G. Smith, Government in Kano 1350–1950 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), 232.
Smith, Government in Kano, 232; Ibrahim Ado-Kurawa, Sullubawan Dabo (Kano, Kurawa Holdings, 1990), 6; and Dantiye, “Kano Frontier Strongholds,” 90–93.
Jamie Bruce Lockhart and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Hugh Clapperton into the Interior of Africa Records of Second Expedition 1825–1827 (Leiden, Brill, 2005), 265.
Philips, “Ribats in the Sokoto Caliphate,” 437–45; and Paul E. Lovejoy, “Plantations in the Economy of the Sokoto Caliphate,” Journal of African History 19, 3 (1978): 341–68.
For further discussions on increased use of slaves in nineteenth-century Africa, see, for instance, Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery. A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 140–64.
See, for example, Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), 73–77.
J. S. Hogendorn, “Slave Acquisition and Delivery in Precolonial Hausaland,” in R. Dumett and B. K. Schwartz, eds., West African Culture Dynamics: Archaeological and Historical Perspective (New York, Mouton Publishers, 1980), 477–93.
Philip Burnham, “Raiders and Traders in Adamawa: Slavery as a Regional System,” in James L. Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980), 43–72.
Alhaji Muhammadu Nalado, Kano State Jiya Da Yau (Zaria, Jangari Cultural Organisation, 1968), 9–10.
C. G. B. Gidley, “Mantanfas-A Study in Oral Tradition,” in African Language Studies VI, (965): 37.
Alhaji Abubakar Dokaji, Kano ta Dabo Cigari (Zaria, Gaskiya Corporation, 1958), 69; and SNP KAN PRO 1/11/1.
Ibid.; Smith, Government in Kano, 233–35; and Mohammed Bashir Salau, “Slaves in a Muslim City: A Survey of Slavery in Nineteenth Century Kano,” in Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Slavery, Islam and Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 93.
Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 28.
Gwyn Campbell, “Introduction: Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labor in the Indian Ocean World,” Slavery and Abolition 24, 2 (2003): xviii.
For more details on the raids on the Ningi region, see Adell Patton, Jr., “An Islamic Frontier Polity: The Ningi Mountains of Northern Nigeria, 1846–1902,” in The African Frontier, ed. Igor Kopytoff (Bloomington, IN, 1987), 193–213; and M. G. Smith, Government in Kano, 274–77. However, this is not to suggest that Muslims were not also enslaved from the Ningi region.
This is not to suggest that all those enslaved through foreign warfare were retained at Fanisau. However, the specific evidence on those introduced into the settlement indicate that a significant number of enslaved prisoners ended up there, even though in most cases temporarily. See also Paul E. Lovejoy, Abdullahi Mahadi, and Mansur Ibrahim Mukhtar, “C. L. Temples ‘Notes on the history of Kano,’” Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources 4 (1993): 7–76 for details on the Warji raid cited above.
For introductory details on the pattern of the Atlantic voyage to the New World, see, for instance, James Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Short Illustrated History (Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1983), 40–64.
Yunusa Collection: Testimonies of Dan Rimin Kano and Muhammadu Rabi’u (Fanisau, July 13, 1975). For a discussion on the humusi practice in the Sokoto Caliphate case, see, for instance, Mahdi Adamu, “The Delivery of Slaves from the Central Sudan to the Bight of Benin in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries,” in H. A Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market. Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, Academic Press, 1979), 167.
For valuable discussions on the natural increase of the U.S. slave population, see Robert W. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, W. W. Norton, 1989), 123–26.
C. Vann Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North/South Dialogue (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983), 91.
Neil Skinner, ed. and trans., Alhaji Mahmudu K’oki: Kano Malam (Zaria, Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1977), 54.
Ibrahim Hamza, “Slavery and Plantation Society at Dorayi in Kano Emirate,” in P. E. Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, NJ., Markus Wiener, 2004), 130.
A good example of works that refer to Fanisau as the emir’s summer residence is Chinedu N. Ubah, Government and Administration of Kano Emirate, 1900–1930 (Nsukka, University of Nsukka Press, 1985), 17, footnote 97.
Rudolf Prietze, “Hausa Singers” (Ph.D. dissertation, Universitaet zu Goettingen, 1916), 28. A reader may also wish to read the notes that, to some extent, explain this portion of the song in page 29 of the dissertation.
Smith, Government in Kano, 316; and Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate (London, Longman, 1967), 202–3.
For details on Lander’s visit, see his journal in H. Clapperton’s Journal of Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa from the Bight of Benin to Socaccatoo (London, Frank Cass, 1966), 287.
For details on the presentation of gifts to rulers in the region known as the Sokoto Caliphate in general, see Louis Brenner, “The North African Trading Community in the Nineteenth-Century Central Sudan,” in Aspects of West African Islam, edited by D. F. McCall and N. R. Benett (Boston: Boston University Press, 1971), 141. However, although there is no acknowledged example at Fanisau, the emirs in Hausaland also present gifts to important foreigners.
Sean A. Stilwell, “The Kano Mamluks: Royal Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1807–1903” (Ph.D. dissertation, York University, 1999), 113.
Ibid., 322; and his “Slavery in Two Ribats in Kano and Sokoto,” in P. E. Lovejoy, ed., Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam (Princeton, NJ., Markus Wiener, 2004), 111–12.
For more details on the land tenure policy in the Sokoto Caliphate in general, see, for instance, Ibrahim Muhammad Jumare, “Land Tenure in the Sokoto Sultanate of Nigeria,” (Ph.D. dissertation, York University, 1995).
Hussaina J. Abdullahi and Ibrahim Hamza, “Women and Land in Northern Nigeria: The Need for Independent Ownership Rights,” in L. Muthoni Wanyeki, ed., Women and Land in Africa: Culture, Religion and Realizing Women’s Rights (London, Zed Books, 2003), 145–47.
For good discussions on absentee estate holders in non-African contexts, see, for example, Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, l972).
Lowell Joseph Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763–1833: A Study in Social and Economic History (New York, Century, 1928).
Abdulrazaq Giginyu Sa’idu, “History of a Slave Village in Kano: Gandun Nassarawa,” (B. A. Essay, Bayero University Kano, 1981). Meanwhile, it is nec-essary to note Gandun Nassarawa was located about 8 kilometers from Kano city center, and that the number of slaves at that estate, as in the emir’s estates in Fanisau probably fluctuated during the nineteenth century. In spite of this probability, available sources still confirm the vastness of the royal estates in Fanisau during this same period.
Heinreich Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken Under the Auspices of H. B. M’S Government in the Years 1849–1855, Vol. 1, (London, Frank Cass, 1965), 609.
H. L. B. Moody, The Walls and Gates of Kano City (Lagos, Department of Antiquities, Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1969), 43.
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Salau, M.B. (2011). The Development of the Fanisau Plantation Complex. In: The West African Slave Plantation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120167_3
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