Abstract
Most of the extant literature on the Islamic book traditions in West Africa pays disproportionate attention to Timbuktu while ignoring the Hausaland which has a long history of Islamic culture dating back to several centuries before British colonization in the first decade of the twentieth century. The colonials introduced the printing press (for administrative purposes) which resulted in the gradual shift from manual reproduction of manuscripts to mechanical duplication. This chapter examines the various ways through which British colonial rule transformed the book culture of northern Nigeria as a specific example of the materiality of textual practices. The introduction of printing, particularly the offset lithographic technique enabled the reproduction of handwritten texts (which, following Adeeb Khalid, I call “printed manuscripts”) retaining most of their Islamic manuscript features. This transformation made it possible for “printed manuscripts” to be duplicated in thousands of copies and distributed to different areas of northern Nigeria and beyond especially from the 1950s. The new technology also empowered some manuscript copyists to establish themselves as calligraphers and publishers of Islamic books in the late colonial period. The colonial period also saw the institution of surveillance structure to monitor and censor local authorships. The determination of the ulamā to resist colonial censorship coupled with the communication possibilities provided by colonial infrastructure inspired some Muslim authors to explore printing presses in Egypt. Thus, the network of Islamic book production and distribution in the colonial period epitomises implicit resistance to colonial administration.
Résumé
La plupart de la littérature encore existante sur les traditions du livre islamique en Afrique de l’Ouest attire une attention disproportionnée à Tombouctou, tout en ignorant le pays Haoussa qui a une longue histoire de la culture islamique datant de plusieurs siècles avant la colonisation britannique au première décennie du XXe siècle. Les coloniaux ont introduit la presse d’imprimerie (pour les besoins administratifs), ayant pour résultat le passage progressif de la reproduction manuelle des manuscrits à la duplication mécanique. Ce chapitre examine les manières différentes par lesquelles autorité coloniale de la Grande-Bretagne a transformé la culture du livre au nord du Nigéria, comme un exemple spécifique de la matérialité des pratiques textuelles. L’introduction de l’imprimerie, en particulier la technique lithographique offset a permis la reproduction de textes manuscrits (ce que j’appelle “manuscrits imprimés”) conservant la plupart de leurs caractéristiques islamiques. Cette transformation a permis la duplication des « manuscrits imprimés » en milliers de copies pour distribuer dans les régions différentes au nord du Nigéria et au-delà, surtout après 1950. La nouvelle technologie a permis également à certains copistes de manuscrits d’établir eux-mêmes comme calligraphes et éditeurs de livres islamiques à la fin de la période coloniale. La période coloniale a témoigné également l’institution d’une structure de surveillance pour surveiller et censurer les auteurs locaux. La détermination des ulamā à résister à la censure coloniale, associée avec les possibilités de communication offertes par les infrastructures coloniales, ont inspiré certains auteurs musulmans à explorer les presses d’imprimerie en Égypte. Ainsi, le réseau de production de livres islamiques et la distribution à l’époque coloniale incarne la résistance implicite à l’administration coloniale.
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Notes
- 1.
Though several articles in the volume edited by Jeppie and Diagne are on other areas in West Africa, its main focus is on Timbuktu.
- 2.
This chapter draws from my PhD research on the transformation of the Kano Book Market in the twentieth century to the early twenty-first centuries (Adam 2021a).
- 3.
Generally, a student was considered to have completed his/her Qur’ānic education after successfully completing recitation of the entire chapters of the Qur’ān. This process is accomplished in stages. In the first stage, emphasis is placed on learning the letters. Then the student would start writing portions of the Qur’ān on his/her wooden slate to be memorized. At the last stage, he/she would only be required to write the lessons and recite them before the teacher and thereafter repeatedly read the lessons. He/she would then wash off the slate to write the next lesson. After completing the education, some graduates would pursue memorization of the Qur’ān either with their teacher or with another one. Many students, however, would abandon their studies after memorizing a few chapters of the Qur’ān.
- 4.
Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī, al-Risāla.
- 5.
Khālid Ibn Isḥāq, Mukhtaṣar al-Khalīl.
- 6.
The Fulanis have been in Hausaland for centuries. They comprise both nomadic and settled groups. A significant percentage of the latter were Islamic scholars. Some of them rendered services to the palace. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Fulani with the support of many disgruntled Hausa people waged a Jihād against the Hausa rulers who were dethroned and replaced by the Fulani. From then onwards, the Fulani came to constitute a class of traditional rulers that also later supported the British administration.
- 7.
The word “Malam” (with capital “M”) is also used as an honorific title before the name of a male; roughly equivalent to the English Mister.
- 8.
One of the possible reasons for this paucity was because the Fulanis who took over the administration of the Hausaland at the beginning of the nineteenth century burnt historical records of the previous centuries. The Fulani considered the Hausa rulers they conquered as nominal Muslims and their documents as relics of the syncretic administrations to be destroyed.
- 9.
For example, when Muhammad El-Amin El-Kanemi, the great nineteenth-century scholar of Borno was returning from pilgrimage, he was said to have bought many books. It is worthy of note that even in the Middle East, the printing of mainstream Islamic text was a nineteenth-century phenomenon. For centuries, the Ottoman empire had prevented the printing of Qur’ān.
- 10.
According to Hugh Clapperton, a Scottish explorer of West and Central Africa, during his second visit to Sokoto in 1826–27, he presented gifts to Sultan Muhammad Bello, the Sultan (ruler) of Sokoto including printed books such as the New Testament, the Qur’ān, and Euclid’s Elements, all in Arabic. The Sultan had told Clapperton that they used to have a copy of Euclid’s Elements. It had been brought for them from Mecca by one of their relatives but was destroyed when part of their house was burnt in a fire the previous year (Clapperton 1929).
- 11.
Sahnun (d. 854), mudawwana al-Kubrā.
- 12.
The Sokoto Caliphate was a theocratic confederation founded after the Jihad of Usman Danfodio in Hausaland in the early nineteenth century. It existed as an independent entity from then until 1900s when British forces conquered the Caliphate. From then onwards, it was integrated into the British Indirect Rule system of colonial administration with its rulers serving as subordinates to the British administration.
- 13.
There are many works on his life and career. For an example, see Hiskett (1973).
- 14.
However, we do not know how many dealers operated in the pre-colonial book market.
- 15.
One of the colonial educationists, R. M. East, had made reference to the intensive reading practices the people of northern Nigeria were used to such that when the first Hausa newspaper was introduced they applied the same reading habit by going through the paper from the beginning to the end. See East (1943).
- 16.
In the colonial administration of Nigeria, the Resident was the administrative head of a province.
- 17.
It is not clear from the report who Mr. Orme was. In all probability, he was a KNAP official.
- 18.
The officials were the Waziri (the Prime Minister), the Galadima (the administrator of the capital city) and the Madaki (commander of the armed forces). They were members of the Emir’s Council which administered the Kano Province under the supervision of the British officers.
- 19.
This is an indication that Malam Mahmudu had to apply for printing of the book through a government official. It was not clear whether the work was paid for or not.
- 20.
For example in pre-colonial period, there was lively debate between Uthman Dan Fodio and other scholars who did not believe in the justification for the Jihad. For example the Shehu of Borno had engaged in debates with Muhammad Bello who wrote the rejoinders to Dan Fodio on behalf of his father.
- 21.
According to Ibrahim Mandawari (b. 1948) who is now a bookseller, while he was a student of the Qur’ānic school, he and his colleagues relied solely on the Qur’ānic manuscript of their teacher for copying their lessons on wooden boards. According to Mandawari, it was only in the 1980s that the lithographs of the Qur’ān became popular in Kano.
- 22.
This is not peculiar to northern Nigeria. The same scepticism throughout the Muslim world resulted in the late adoption of the printing technology to print the Qur’ān until the nineteenth century.
- 23.
The number of Qur’ānic schools continued to grow throughout colonial and postcolonial periods. Recent statistics reveal tremendous increase in the enrolment of the Qur’ānic schools. According to records of the Nigeria’s Universal Basic Primary Education Commission (UBEC), enrolment in Qur’ānic schools in northern Nigeria exceeded 8.5 million. In the case of Kano, it was estimated that about 300,000 students lived as Qur’ānic students (Almajirai) (Hoechner 2014).
- 24.
The trend changed in the twentieth century. Colonial infrastructure eased communication between northern Nigeria and the Middle East. Egypt became the primary destination of Muslim authors, publishers, and booksellers of northern Nigeria from the 1940s until the 1960s. This is partly because the publishers seemed to be satisfied with their partners in Egypt. From the early 1970s, however, a Lebanese Publisher, Dar El-Fikr took over from the Egyptians. The company became dominant for nearly three decades.
- 25.
For example, the work of Shaykh ʿAtīq, Qatf al-thimar al-yani’a was published in 1946 by Maṭbaʿa al-Zawiya al-Tijaniyya. It was reprinted by the MBH in 1971 (Hunwick et al. 1995).
- 26.
Muhammad Hafiz al-Tijani, Letter to Abū Bakr ʿAtīq, Personal Collection of Shaykh Abū Bakr ʿAtīq. The letter was written in the early 1960s since a reference was made to the fact that the book of Muhammad Hafiz, published in 1964, was about to come out from press.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Tahir Lawan Muaz, a grandson of Shaykh ʿAtīq for sharing his copies of ʿAtīq’s letters with me.
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Adam, S.Y. (2023). Colonialism and Book Culture: The Resistance of the Muslim Scholarly Communities in Northern Nigeria. In: Engmann, R.A.A. (eds) Timbuktu Unbound. Heritage Studies in the Muslim World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34824-2_2
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