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The Bayajida Legend in Hausa Folklore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

W. K. R. Hallam
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Extract

The various Bayajida legends in Hausa folklore describe how Bayajida, son of the king of Baghdad, came to Bornu and married the ruler's daughter. He later fled and came to Daura, fathering the founders of the seven Hausa states. The legends seem to be describing events which happened during the tenth century A.D. and Bayajida may be identical with the Ibāḍite sectary Abū Yazīd who resisted the Fāṭimids of Tunisia until he was killed by them in 947. The debris of his army may have fled across the Sahara and arrived in Bornu, then north of Lake Chad. After some time a part of this rabble which had remained unassimilated moved south-west and interbred with the indigenous inhabitants round Daura, forming the Hausa aristocracies. Different ingredients of the legends may be folk memories of events near Mecca, Berber myths of origin and perhaps Greek mythology, as well as accounting for the introduction of horses and the sinking of wells in rock by the incoming Berbers.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

1 If a Hausa race exists rather than a homogeneous group of peoples who speak the Hausa language.Google Scholar

2 Hausa; the Hausa Seven.Google Scholar

3 A complete account of this version is given in A Chronicle of Abuja, by Hassan, Alhaji and Na'ibi, Mallam Shuaibu (Lagos, 1962), 1–3.Google Scholar

4 Hausa; son of, equivalent to the Arabic ibn or bin.Google Scholar

5 Mai; the title of the Maghumi rulers of Bornu, whose dynasty started traditionally in the seventh century A.D., enduring to the beginning of the nineteenth.Google Scholar

6 Māgira; a title given to a lady of the royal house of Bornu. She need not be a daughter of the ruler but could be, for example, his eldest sister or mother.Google Scholar

7 South-east of Lake Chad.Google Scholar

8 Biram is now Biram-ta-Gabas in Hadejia Emirate, Kano Province, Northern Nigeria.Google Scholar

9 In one of the Hausa versions of Major Edgar's collection (Edgar, Frank, Litafi Na Tatsuniyoyi Na Hausa, 1 (Edinburgh, 1924), 224, she is naïvely recorded as saying, ‘Yesterday night a certain stranger stayed at my house with an animal; whether it was a bull or a horse I do not know’.Google Scholar

10 Hausa; the killer of Sarki.Google Scholar

11 Sarki; an Emir; chief or headman of a town, village or of any guild or calling. (From The Rev. Bargery, G. P., A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary (London, 1934): the official Hausa dictionary.)Google Scholar

12 Three are found in Major Edgar's collection. There is also a Bornu version given in Palmer, H. R., Sudanese Memoirs (Lagos, 1928), 111, 246, which ends with Bayajida's flight with the Māgira and the comment, ‘in later days the people of Bornu heard that Abū Yāzid had become Sultan of Daura’.Google Scholar

13 To the east of Lake Chad, later conquered by Bornu, now a province of Tchad Republic.Google Scholar

14 Abba Kyari is a title given to a prince of the Kanemi dynasty of Bornu, which commenced in the nineteenth century, and the use of it here merely indicates that a superior type of person came from the direction of Bornu. This version was recorded from hearsay at the beginning of the century and illustrates, first, how modern elements may intrude into oral traditions and, secondly, the usual (and understandable) Hausa ignorance of the significance of Bornu titles, an intricate and interesting subject.Google Scholar

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19 Another important historical work of which the first English translation was made in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XXXVIII (1908).Google Scholar See also Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, III, 99–132.Google Scholar

20 Not far from Maradi in modern Niger Republic.Google Scholar

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24 Gao according to the Ibn Khaldūn, Tademekket according to Ibn Hammādū.Google Scholar

25 Ibn Khaldūn gives the names of three of the sons as Yazīd (hence Abū Yazīd, Father of Yazīd), Fadl and Ayyūb. He also records the interesting fact that Abū Yazid before his death wished to escape into the Sudan but some of his allies refused.Google Scholar

26 See Bivar, A. D. H. and Shinnie, P. L., ‘Old Kanuri Capitals’, J.A.H. III, no. 1 (1962), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 It is difficult even to speculate on who the Bornu mai was when Bayajida is supposed to have arrived in Bornu. Barth has the mai Katuri as reigning throughout the tenth century! (Travels in Central Africa, 11 (New York, 1857), 634)Google Scholar although Palmer (The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, 125)Google Scholar dates him as ca. 900. Urvoy, (Histoire de l'Empire du Bornou (Paris, 1949) 26)Google Scholar gives the Bornu rulers during the tenth century as: Aritso 893 to 942, Katuri 942 to 961, Ayoma (Biyoma) 961 to 1010, If he is Correct, and if the remnants of Abū Yazid's forces did in fact seek refuge in Bornu, they would probably have arrived during Katuri's reign. The Bornu version of the Bayajida legend (see note 12) gives the mai as Idris ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, but, as already stated, this and other details have been inserted later. The first real Idris to rule was Idris Ngalemi who reigned from 1353 to 1376.

28 Beriberi is the name by which the Hausa and others describe the Kanuri of Bornu and it is generally supposed to be derived from the term Berber, although Urvoy (Histoire de l'Empire de Bornou, 142, fn.)Google Scholar argues that Berber is an Arabic generalization of the Greek and Latin barbaroi and barbari, terms unknown to the Berbers themselves.

29 Buchanan, Angus, Sahara (London, 1926), 116–17.Google Scholar

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32 Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 107.Google Scholar

33 Lewicki, Les Ibadites en Tunisie au Moyen Age, 12. Paper presented to a conference held in Accademia Polacca di Scienze e Lettere in Rome, 17 February 1958.Google Scholar

34 Charlesworth, M. P., Trade-routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1924), 134.Google Scholar

35 Ibn Khaldūn relates how the ass was a gift to Abū Yazid during his campaigns.Google Scholar

36 For a description of the limes and fossatum, the two components of frontier defence against desert raiders in Roman North Africa, see Warmington, B. H., The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest (Cambridge, 1954), 20–6.Google Scholar

37 From the legends it seems that two other groups may have moved on to Kanem and Bagirmi north-east and south-east of Lake Chad.Google Scholar

38 The origin and etymology of the term Hausa is obscure. Neither Ibn Battūta nor Leo Africanus, who travelled in the Sudan in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, mentioned the name in their works, nor did Ibn Khaldūn, a contemporary of Ibn Battūta.Google Scholar

39 In Hausa versions of the legends the word arna, meaning pagan in the sense of heathen, is used, rather than kafiri, meaning a non-Muslim.Google Scholar

40 Burton compares the old question in Southern Europe, ‘Are you a Christian or a Protestant?’ with the situation which existed between the Sunnīs and the Shī'ah, when commenting on a story in which a spy hired to murder the ruling Khalifa, when captured, replied, ‘No, I am a Rejector’, to the Khalifa's plaintive ‘Art thou not a Muslim?’. The Shī'ites are known as the Rejectors from their saying ‘Inna rafidnāhum—‘Truly we have rejected them’—of the Sunnīs. See Illustrated Edition of The Arabian Nights, translated by Captain Sir Burton, R. F., vol. III (London, 1897), notes on pp. 171 and 207;Google Scholar and also the same author's Pilgrimage to Medinah and Meccah, vol. II (London, 1897), fn. to p. 4.Google Scholar

41 -uwa or -awa is a common plural for proper names in Hausa and in the Central Sudan: thus Hausamen are Hausawa and Frenchmen are Faransawa.Google Scholar

42 The term Ziduwa could also, but with less probability, have referred to: Zaidīs—unlikely as this sect flourished mainly in the Yemen; Zindīq, applied to any heretic or atheist but in particular one who read Zend books; Zend, a Zoroastrian; Didd, an Arabic word meaning enemy.Google Scholar

43 The appointment of governors by Abū Yazīd is mentioned by Ibn Khaldūn.Google Scholar

44 In the diwan of Bornu rulers reproduced by Paimer, the comment is made: ‘From Sultain Saif to Tsilim none had come into the world black, but all were light, like the Arabs’, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, p. 579.Google Scholar The legendary founder of the Maghumi dynasty of Bornu was the Himyarite prince Saif ibn Dhī Yazan, and the Maghumi mais are called Saifawa or Saifuwa.

45 Norris, H. T., ‘Yemenis in the Western Sahara,’ J.A.H. III, no. 2 (1962), 318.Google Scholar The dam burst during the sixth century A.D., probably before 570, giving rise to an Arab saying, ‘They were gone and scattered like Saba’ referring to the town which was evacuated at the bursting.

46 Barka; a salutation, greeting or congratulation (Bargery's Hausa Dictionary). -mu is the first person plural possessive. Barka is derived from a Berber term, baraka, denoting a quality of holiness in people or articles. The Prophet Mubarnmad was possessed of the greatest baraka. High office may be a sign of baraka, which is further attributed to saints' tombs and a variety of plants and objects, including trees and seed corn, bread, wells, springs, stones, rocks and caves. Barka is particularly used as a greeting in Kano and is widely used also in Kanuri, spoken in Bornu. The town name Barka, where Bagoda is supposed to have sojourned on his peregrinations before arriving in Kano, is also fairly certainly derived from this term.Google Scholar

47 Palmer, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, 273.Google Scholar

48 Kasagu is the name of the well which is still pointed out in Daura as the place where the serpent Sarki was killed. Also in Daura may be seen a knife and sword, reputedly Bayajida's.Google Scholar

49 Edgar, Litafi Na Tatsuniyoyi Na Hausa, 1, 223.Google Scholar

50 Al-Baidhawi, , Baidhawi Commentarius in Coranum, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1846–1978).Google Scholar

51 For a detailed history of this river see Hallam, W. K. R., Komadugu Yobe (Nigeria no. 76, 03 1963), 4–15.Google Scholar

52 The other names seem to be derived from Hausa phrases in the same way as the names of Bayajida's three sons.Google Scholar

53 See note 36, and Hitti, Philip K., History of the Arabs (London, 1964), 9, II, and 214.Google Scholar

54 Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 85.Google Scholar

55 Za Alayaman = Saif al-Yamani = Saif the Yemenite.Google Scholar

56 Mahmoud Kati ben El-Hadj El-Motaoukkel, Tarikh el-Fettach (Texte Arabe et Traduction Française par O. Houdas et M. Delafosse), 1913–1914.Google Scholar

57 The Greeks' first colony was Cyrene, founded by Battus supposedly at the instance of the Deiphic oracle in these terms: ‘O Battus…the lord Apollo sends you to Libya, nurse of flocks, to build a city rich in fleeces.…’ See Herodotus, The Histories, Book IV.Google Scholar

58 Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, III, 99–504.Google Scholar

59 Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 32.Google Scholar