Academic literature on the topic 'Hausa-Ajami'

This article presents an analysis of Hausa glosses in a nineteenth-century Qur'anic manuscript (C1688) from the library of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, and argues that a systematic study of Arabic manuscripts with Hausa glosses is needed for a re-interpretation of early Hausa writings in Arabic script. The origins of the Hausa written tradition in Arabic script and the evolution of the concept ‘Ajami’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from ‘non-Arabic (language, culture, etc.)’ to ‘a variety of Arabic script adapted to African languages (with additional vowel-signs and diacritics)’ is discussed, and it is suggested that the frequency of the marginal notes ʿajam and ʿajamī used to mark non-Arabic glosses in Arabic manuscripts might depend on the linguistic properties of the manuscripts as well as sub-regional traditions of writing in Sudanic Africa. Hausa glosses in the St Petersburg manuscript – including nouns, adjectives, verbs and verbal constructions – are described in same detail. Special attention is paid to borrowings from Arabic and negative verbal constructions which are not attested in Hausa dialects and modern Standard Hausa. For the first time in Hausa studies, the shift in the meaning of the Hausa word shisshigi (from ‘acting tyrannically’ to ‘meddlesomeness’) is explored. The glosses are compared with the Arabic text of Tafsīr al-Jalālayn and two modern Hausa tafāsīr, those of Abubakar Mahmud Gumi and Nasiru Kabara. It is demonstrated that the Hausa glosses in the St Petersburg Qur'anic MS share a greater affinity with Kabara's tafsīr than with Gumi's translation, and, on this basis, suggested that the translational practices reflected in the St Petersburg manuscript and in Kabara's tafsīr might be linked with the Qādiriyya tradition of Arabic-Hausa ‘translational reading’.

This manuscript is a history of the family of Muhammad Buji, who led a migration from the town of Bunkari in Argungu (Sokoto State, Nigeria) to Wurno, sometime capital of the Sokoto Caliphate. It is important as an illustration of the ongoing historiographical tradition of Islamic west Africa in local languages, and as evidence of the strong historical sense and continuing production of historical documents by certain of the scholars of the area.Wurno was constructed ca. 1830 by Muhammad Bello, Sultan of Sokoto and successor of Usuman dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate. Its primary purpose was to defend Sokoto from the northeast, and it replaced Magarya as the principal ribat (frontier fortification) and residence of Bello in that area. It also became the staging point for the annual dry season campaigns against the Gobirawa and other enemies of the Caliphate. When the Caliph himself was resident there, it became the capital of the state. Barth referred to it as such in his account of his travels. Wurno was the capital with more and more frequency as the nineteenth century wore on.

L’incursion de l’Islam en Afrique subsaharienne à partir du IXe siècle, s’est opérée via le commerce transsaharien entre les peuples d’Afrique du Nord et ceux du Sahel. Ce contact entretenu par les caravanes commerciales entre les deux peuples a engendré l’islamisation progressive de la population hausaphone. Sous l’influence de l’arabe, plusieurs vocables sont introduits dans le lexique du hausa. Cet effet islamique s’accompagne d’une révolution dans la production de la littérature arabe-ajami. Grâce à l’adaptation de l’écriture ajami, Nana Asma’u, une polyglotte de renommée écrit au 18e siècle, plusieurs œuvres poétiques dont la plupart sont en langues - hausa, fulfulde et arabe. Sur la base de ces observations, cette thèse se propose d’analyser les emprunts lexicaux arabes dans les œuvres poétiques de l’auteur, et leur intégration dans la langue hausa. Sur le plan méthodologique, notre travail de recherche s’appuie sur la combinaison de deux méthodes : linguistique et statistique ; ce qui nous a permis d’analyser tous les phénomènes afférant au métissage linguistique et culturel dans les œuvre de Nana Asma’u. Notre corpus comprend 15 œuvres poétiques que nous avons lemmatisées en préalable aux calculs statistiques à l’aide du logiciel Excel. Les principaux résultats obtenus sur les formes graphiques, montrent une fréquence d’utilisation très élevée des emprunts arabes. L’association de l’analyse linguistique et des traitements informatiques, nous a permis ainsi de confirmer, de façon formelle et impartiale, que la plupart des emprunts les plus fréquents relèvent de domaines religieux, et donc liés aux lexiques de situation
The incursion of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa from the 19th Century was operated through trans-Saharan commerce between the peoples of North Africa and those of the Sahel. This contact, maintained by the commercial caravans of these two peoples engendered the progressive islamisation of the Hausa-speaking populations. Under the influence of Arabic, several terms were introduced into Hausa lexicon. This Islamic effect comes with a revolution in the production of Arabic-Ajami literature. Thanks to the adaptation of Ajami writing, Nana Asma’u, a renowned polyglot, wrote several poetic works in the 18th Century, most of which are in the Hausa, Fulfulde and Arabic languages. On the basis of these observations, this thesis proposes to analyse the borrowed Arabic lexicon in the poetic works of the author, and their integration into the Hausa language. From the methodological perspective, our research work relies on a combination of two methods: linguistic and statistical; which enable us to analyse all the phenomena relating to linguistic and cultural hybridization in the works of Nana Asma’u. Our corpus is made up of poetic works that we have first of all lemmatized using statistical calculations with the help of Excel software. The principal results, obtained in the form graphs, indicate a frequency of very high usage of words borrowed from Arabic. The association of the linguistic and computer analyses enabled us to confirm, in a formal and impartial manner, that most of the frequent borrowings fall under religious domains, and as such linked to situational vocabulary