Hausa Poems as Sources for Social and Economic History, II

• Published in: History in Africa 1989, Vol.16, p.97-136
• Main Author: Duffill, M. B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communities; Famine; Hausa; Literary criticism; Men; Poetic themes; Poetry; Poverty; Proverbs; Religious poetry; Supernaturalism
• ISSN: 0361-5413; 1558-2744
• DOI: 10.2307/3171780

In the following commentary on three Hausa poems presented in Part I of this essay, I attempt to analyze each poem, paying greatest attention to Wakar Talauci da Wadata. First I take up the matter of the dating of the poem from internal evidence and follow that with some general observations on the problems and methods involved in the analysis. The detailed commentary on Wakar Talauci da Wadata follows, divided into four sections: an examination of the objective conditions of poverty and wealth as they are presented in the poem; a discussion of the subjective evaluation of the condition of poverty and the condition of wealth, as Darho observed it among the Hausa; an examination of the way in which women are represented in the poem; and a discussion of the proposition that there are contradictions in the poem itself and in the social position of the poet. After discussing Wakar Madugu Yahaya and Wakar Abinda, I try to place Wakar Talauci da Wadata in the comparative context of several Western European literary products and one Arabic. The object of this excursus is to show that in the literature of other cultures, more or less distant in both time and space, there have been concerns and preoccupations that are essentially the same as those that occupied the mind of Darho. Unlike the 1903 version of the poem used by Pilaszewicz and Tahir/Goody, the version from the Mischlich collection is undated, but there is internal evidence to suggest that the poem was composed no earlier than 1874/75 and probably between 1896 and 1910.