Hausa trade is old, and so is Hausa migration. Caravan merchants carried cloth, leather, salt and natron south and kola, cattle and other goods north (see the chapter on Trade), and where they stopped for long they created settlements. Salamone, following earlier researchers, writes that Hausa entered Yoruba country from the eighteenth century. The jihad of dan Fodio did not penetrate the Yoruba interior, but it showed Hausa merchants what trade opportunities existed there.
By the early nineteenth century Hausa merchants and Fulani cattle herders were settling together in Yoruba towns including Ibadan, which became a kind of camp and centre for Hausa activities in what is now western Nigeria. Their interests included the cattle trade between north and south and the middle section of the caravan route. The same sources note that they were also involved in the trade in captives, including the transatlantic trade, an uncomfortable fact that this site does not hide (see the chapters on Trade and Sokoto).
Others left for other reasons: some were freed or escaped slaves, some had quarrelled with a father and wanted a fresh start, some carried loads for hire in the north–south “burden transport”, and later migrants came for work, study or pilgrimage. Over time, Hausa communities spread across Nigeria and beyond.
Sources for this article
- Salamone 2010, ch. 15, pp. 146–147
- Cohen 1969, chapters on trade and migration