Becoming Hausa: an open identity

Salamone stresses that “Hausa” has never been a closed box. The word first meant the language of the people of the old city-states. Over centuries it came to cover many groups who adopted the language and way of life: town-dwelling Fulani, Kanuri and Tuareg settlers, riverine peoples such as the Gungawa and others. Salamone calls this process “becoming Hausa”, and notes that it often brought real advantages in trade and politics.

Other terms exist and need care. Maguzawa are Hausa-speakers who kept the older, spirit-centred religion rather than Islam, and are considered kin of the early Hausa. Habe (the plural of a Fulani word) was used by the Fulani for the pre-jihad Hausa rulers and their followers, so it carries an outsider’s viewpoint. Hausa-Fulani, now common in Nigerian politics, describes the merging of the two groups after the 19th-century Sokoto Caliphate, but it is a modern shorthand, not a single ethnic group.

Salamone, following M. G. Smith, also warns against sweeping statements: the emirates of Hausaland developed differently, so what is true of Kano may not be true of Zaria or Sokoto. Much of his own fieldwork comes from a small multi-ethnic emirate, Yauri, and from the Hausa community of Ibadan.

In recent years, some Hausa activists online (often grouped under the label Hausawa Zalla, “genuine Hausa”) have argued for separating Hausa identity from Fulani influence, while critics warn that such language can inflame ethnic tension. This site does not take a side: it records that the debate exists and that the two identities have been intertwined for two centuries.