Telling Stories, Making Histories

Women, Words, and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland and the Sokoto Caliphate

Mary Wren Bivins

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780325070131
• eBook ISBN: 9780313094422
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Through reconstruction of oral testimony, folk stories and poetry, the true history of Hausa women and their reception of Islam's vision of Muslim in Western Africa have been uncovered. Mary Wren Bivins is the first author to locate and examine the oral texts of the 19th century Hausa women and challenge the written documentation of the Sokoto Caliphate. The personal narratives and folk stories reveal the importance of illiterate, non-elite women to the history of jihad and the assimilation of normative Islam in rural Hausaland. The captivating lives of the Hausa are captured, shedding light on their ordinary existence as wives, mothers, and providers for their family on the eve of European colonial conquest.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1. Women and Stories, Scholars, and Texts: Women’s Voices in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland and the Sokoto Caliphate
• 2. Missions to Hausaland: European Observations, Investigations, and Conversations
• 3. In Praise of Farming: Women, Food, and Identity in kasar Hausa
• 4. “A story, a story. Let it come. Let it go.” The Narrative Landscapes and Social Spaces of Storytelling
• 5. “If A Man Does Not Want You.” Stories of Marriage and Marital Crisis
• 6. “Womenfolk Take Heed!” Hausa Wives and the Lessons of Islamic Reform
• 7. Telling Stories, Making History: Women, Narrative, and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index