The boundary drawn between British Nigeria and French Niger around 1900 cut through Hausaland. Niger became independent on 3 August 1960, and roughly half of its population is Hausa. Their main centres are Maradi and Zinder, with Hausa also the most widely spoken language of the country. The region around Maradi is traditionally linked with the Katsina rulers who moved north when Katsina fell to the jihad in the early nineteenth century, and the border today is crossed by trade, family ties and pilgrims, even when relations between governments are tense.
Adeline Masquelier’s ethnography of the Nigerien town of Dogondoutchi shows how Hausa-speaking communities there live with both Islam and the Bori spirit tradition, a reminder that the questions discussed in the chapter on Beliefs are not limited to Nigeria.
Over many centuries traders, scholars and pilgrims also carried the language farther, to Ghana (where Hausa-speaking quarters are known as zongos), Cameroon, Chad, Sudan and, more recently, Europe and North America. Hausa is today one of the most widely used African languages for trade, news and religion beyond the area where it is spoken as a mother tongue. The chapter on the Diaspora looks at these communities in more detail.
Sources for this article
- Masquelier 2001, introduction and chapters on Islam and spirits in Dogondoutchi
- Unsigned overview (n.d.), sections on geography and diaspora (outline)