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Materials Relating To The Cowry Currencyof The Western Sudan—I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

M. Hiskett
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Extract

The following schedule of an inheritance was discovered by me in 1962 when, by courtesy of the Kano Native Authority, I was carrying out a survey of manuscripts contained in the Library of the Shahuci Judicial School, Kano. In the course of my searches I unearthed from the back of a cupboard a bundle of miscellaneous papers. On examination these proved to consist largely of single folios of Arabic, Fula, and Hausa MSS displaced from their contexts. Scattered among them, however, were a number of sheets which appeared to be taxation returns; lists of booty; household accounts of the palace; fragments of prayers, wirds, Qur'anic charms and the like. Among them was this incomplete schedule of an estate.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1966 , pp. 122 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1966

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References

1 Sic, read. It is apparent that this MS is a scribe's jottings, forhis own use and not for public display. There are a few gross errors which I have corrected as indicated. There are in addition, as one might expect in a text where Arabic and Hausa are mixed, certain minor inconsistencies, such as for instance in the agreement of Arabic adjectives with Hausa words and loan-words. I have not attempted to correct these, but have left the MS as the scribe wrote it. I have also preserved his layout as far as the exigencies of printing permit, together with certain idiosyncratic spellings of a type common among the ajami scribes.

2 Sic, read

3 A marginal insertion

4 A marginal insertion

5 An extensive marginal insertion

6 A marginal insertion

7 A marginal insertion

8 A marginal insertion

9 A marginal insertion

10 A marginal insertion

11 A marginal insertion

12 A marginal insertion under what appears to be a mark of insertion

13 A word is here entirely blocked out, and under a mark of insertion in the margin appears

14 The full form of this name is ‘Naroka’. The custom of giving slaves these obliquely allusive names is known in Hausa as habaici ‘innuendo’. The master calls the slave by name, in this case ‘Naroka’ (Na roka ‘I beseech’) and the slave caps her name with her reply, in this case Allah ya ba ni ‘May God grant me’. Sometimes the intention is simply a pious one, to bring good fortune to the household. Sometimes, however, it is employed as a means of confounding enemies and evil-wishers, as in n. 15. and 16, below, and p. 133, n. 18.

15 Nufimmu da su ‘Our intention towards them’ (i.e. the master's enemies and rivals), to which the slave replies Anniya to gari ‘The intention is good’.

16 Me suka yi ‘What have they done The slave replies Ba su yi dadi ba ‘They have not done good’.

17 A marginal insertion: Tsada: one thousand.

18 Sa a yiCause one to do’, to which the slave replies Ba don su so ba ‘Not so that they may like it ’

19 A breed of black horse.

20 A North African decorated saddle.

21 Arabic libd. Felt covering to protect horse in battle.

22 An alternative form of zirnawi, a flat iron stirrup.

23 A Bornu saddle with a curved pommel.

24 White metal ornaments for a harness.

25 An alternative form of gyauto, a type of woman's cloth.

26 A type of cloth with linear pattern.

27 A woman's cloth of black and blue pattern.

28 Cloth made up of gwanda and saki material.

29 A type of gown.

30 A type of black cloth for covering the head and shoulders.

31 Black and white striped cloth.

32 A type of gown.

33 Cotton material with a black and blue check pattern.

34 Locally made white silk produced from the worms which feed on the tamarind (tsamiya) tree.

35 A type of cap which Abraham (Dictionary, s.v.) describes as ‘cap of imported cottonmaterial with pattern bitten in by Hausas’

36 A bit strap.

37 This may be an alternative form of binjima—a sleeveless shirt. Malam Isa Kurawa thinks it is a type of jalala—embroidered saddle-cover.

38 Described by Abraham (op. cit.) as ‘Close-fitting, thick gown with wide tinsel-adorned sleeves’.

39 An indigo-dyed gown.

40 A basket woven of palm fronds.

41 Abraham gives this as ‘type of sleeveless gown’. In fact, however, it is the Arabic jubbah which is a gown for the upper part of the body with very full sleeves.

42 A barnūs (burnous) is a type of long flowing mantle worn by the Arabs;al-gals I cannot identify, but think it to be a type of felt.

43 A type of gown with a neck opening, lined sleeves, and a wide skirt.

44 A kind of flannel or serge.

45 The word katifa means mattress, in Hausa, and the root k.t. f. means ‘broad’ in Arabic. This is clearly a reference to some kind of trouser material, but I have not been able to trace it.

46 Yemeni stuff—yellow striped material from the Yemen. Cf. Arabic yumnah

47 This is clearly a type of material, but I have not been able to trace it.

48 The Hausa word kurmi means ‘thickly-wooded country, thicket’, etc., and Kurmi is the title of the Chief Prison Warder. I have not been able to trace this as a type of gown.

49 Marginal insertion: Gare of saki material: twenty thousand.

50 A poor type of cloth, resembling saki.

51 A cloth of open-work weave.

52 An extensive marginal insertion: Nupe garuma gown of saki material with gare: at sixty thousand. Two garuma (gowns ?): ten thousand. Four garuma (gowns) with another bullam of Nupe stuff: eighty thousand.

53 Dr. A. D. H. Bivar has kindly shown me a fine MS of Itgetn wa 'l-ahkam fī tuhfat al-ḥukkām, copied in A.H. 1070, and belonging to the Emir of Yauri's collection, which bears the following note of sale in a typical jihādī hand recorded at the end of it‘The one sold it, and the other bought it, and he paid for it with a white Nupe gown which had been purchased for thirty thousand (cowries)’.t thus appears that 30,000 was a standard price for this article.

54 Locally woven material made up into narrow strips.

55 Marginal insertion: A white barnūts: twenty thousand.

56 I have been quite unable to trace the meaning of this word. I cannot find it in Hausa. In Arabic it of course means ‘the Sabbath’, ‘Saturday’, and it has many other meanings none of which, however, appear to fit here, except possibly al-sibt ‘tanned hide’. But this seems an unlikely material out of which to make a burnous.

57 A type of locally woven cloth resembling bunu.

58 Described by Abraham as a bridal gown, but apparently also used to signify a type of white material. The word appears to be from the Arabic root‘to veil, to cover’.

59 Described by Abraham as ‘cap of imported cotton material with pattern bitten in by Hausas’

60 A type of locally woven black and white cloth.

61 Zane is basically a woman's body-cloth, but there are many varieties of this garment, a number of which have been listed by Barth, , Travels, second ed., London, 1857, II, 125, for instance ‘zenne daffowa’ which is light blue; ‘fessagida’ which has a broad line of silk interwoven; ‘hammakuku’ with less silk; ‘mailemu’, an interesting word which makes it clear that the Hausa lemu is derived directly from the Arabic laimūn and not from the English word ‘lemon’; ‘zelluwami’ with a silk border; ‘dankatanga’ with red, black, and white silk interwoven; ‘albassan kwara’ with three stripes of mixed colours; ‘godo’ with a thick white and black thread; ‘alkilla’ with white and black chequer pattern; ‘keki’, half indigo, half saki; and most charming of all, a gay cloth known as ‘bini da gani’ ‘Follow and see me ’.Google Scholar

62 Turban presumably made from the cloth known in Arabic as turd.

63 White muslin material used for making turbans. This is clearly an Arabic loan-word, although I have not been able to trace this material in the Arabic dictionaries. It may be a material peculiar to North Africa.

64 A marginal insertion: another hassa turban: at three thousand.

65 A kind of soft calico.

66 Grey baft.

67 A type of wool rug.

68 A marginal insertion: Wawa: at two thousand cowries.

69 Cloth of mixed gwanda and saki.

70 Patterned cotton cloth.

71 Wound silk thread.

72 Kakibe, sometimes kakide, means in Hausa ‘beef or mutton dripping’. This is a possible though unlikely meaning for the word in this context. Myopinion is that it refers to a type of material which I have not traced.

73 Arabic galansūt, a type of cap.

74 I have been unable to trace this form as it appears in the MS. I suspect, however, that it is a corruption for ḥalāwa—sweetmeats, or possibly ḥalū'—collyrium eyesalve.

75 A type of locally woven cloth with a white edge.

76 A marginal insertion: A miskali of rose-water at two thousand cowries; four miskalis: four thousand: then another at one thousand.

77 I am informed by Malam Isa Kurawa that cheeses are brought from Damagaram and Bornuand are bought up by wealthy persons.

78 Described by Abraham as ‘check-matting cloth’.

79 Beza is given by Abraham as ‘yellowish salt from Azben, Taudeni, etc.’. Monteil, P.-L, De Saint-Louis à Tripoli par le lac Tchad, Paris, 1895, 290–1, describes the caravans which set out each September from Azben and Aīr, picked up salt at Bilma, and proceeded from there to Hausaland.Google Scholar

80 Nupe kola-nuts. These are considered to be the best type.

81 Another variety of kola-nut.

82 A turkudi is described by Barth, op. cit., II, 25, as ‘a large cotton cloth of dark green colour’. Abraham describes it as ‘cloth consisting of 12 or 16 kamu of fari-cloth sewn together, dyed with indigo, beaten glossy and wrapped in paper’. From Barth's account it appears that this article, whichwas a Kano manufacture, was highly valued elsewhere in the Sudan, and was sometimes employed as a form of currency, see e.g. II, 502.

83 Arabic manā—a weight equal to two rothls.

84 I have not been able to trace this word, either in Hausa or in Arabic.

85 See p. 136, n. 56.

86 A marginal insertion: al-s.b.t.: at one thousand.

87 A coarse woollen blanket.

88 A kind of perfume with a non-oily base.

89 There are two qualities of rose-water known to the Hausa, and they are termed babban wardi (first quality rose-water) and karamin wardi (second quality rose-water). Barth, op. cit., II, 141, says that rose-water is imported and describes it as a ‘very dear article’ very little disposed of in general trade, but passing privately to princes and great men.

90 A marginal insertion: and one phial of lawanti. Lawanti is a kind of perfume, also with a non-oily base.

91 The well-known ṣaḥīb of al. See article ‘al’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, second ed.

92 Sic. Probably by Abu 1-Fadl 'Iyāḍ b. Mūsā al-Yaḥṣibī, which, of course, is well known in Northern Nigeria; see Kensdale, W. E. N., A catalogue of the Arabic MSS preserved intheUniversity Library, Ibadan, Nigeria, Ibadan, 1955–8, p. 13.Google Scholar

93 Of al. A standard work on Islamic law. See article ‘al’ in El, first ed.

94 Of Ibn Abi Zayd. Also a standard legal text.

95 Described by Abraham as ‘a type of European silk-fabric’.

96 A type of gown with a circular neck and narrow sleeves.

97 A short embroidered gown.

98 A locally woven cloth of red, white, and black weave.

99 The word means ‘leopard’ in Hausa. This is probably a type of patternedcloth called thus because of its resemblance to a leopard's skin. I have not, however, been able to trace the term.

100 Possibly 'yar Rarfi, the cotton material called gwandi or bagwandi.

101 Possibly the material known as tsalala—‘the bride's white cloth’ (Abraham).

102 A marginal insertion: less two thousand.

103 The text reads ‘fifty’ but a following word has been erased and ‘four’ inserted in the margin. See Arabic text, p. 132, n. 13.