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Between Sokoto and Agadez: Inter-Ethnic Hierarchy in the Nineteenth Century

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Between Sokoto and Agadez: Inter-Ethnic Hierarchy in the Nineteenth Century Comp. by: BALA SUBRAMANIAN Stage: Revises1 Chapter No.: 2 Title Name: Rossi Date:24/6/15 Time:15:16:27 Page Number: 34 2 Between Sokoto and Agadez: Inter-Ethnic Hierarchy in the Nineteenth Century ‘Ader, a sort of peninsula of cultivations stretching into the nomadic steppe, has played an inconspicuous role in the history of Hausa peoples. It has always existed apart, retired within itself, without a conquest spirit, depending alternatively on Kebbi or Sokoto to the South, or on the Tuareg to the North (Kel-Aïr, Oullimindens de l’Azaouac and Kel Gress)’.1 Urvoy’s portrait of Ader’s political marginality is accurate in outline, although its imperialist perspective emphasises Ader’s passive exposure to the expansionist schemes of its neighbours. This chapter starts by reconstructing Ader’s history on the basis of sources produced primarily by the elites of Sokoto and Agadez. It goes on to portray a ‘view from within’ based on local sources. This view reveals that, far from being passive, Ader-based societies made a virtue of necessity and turned their environmental and political marginality into a defensive strategy against exterior and interior enemies. It also suggests a different reading of the relations between the intertwined political systems of centralised polities and (semi-)nomadic societies in the West African Sahel. The view from Ader is fragmented. Ader’s ‘society’ is a mix of the many groups that were integrated in shared political and economic struc- tures, but nevertheless differentiated by language, religion, status, and economic specialisation. Probably the same could be said of Sokoto’s emirates and any of the more centralised political formations of the time. But the nature of the sources available for these regions, which 1 Urvoy, Histoire des populations,p.251. 34 Comp. by: BALA SUBRAMANIAN Stage: Revises1 Chapter No.: 2 Title Name: Rossi Date:24/6/15 Time:15:16:27 Page Number: 35 Between Sokoto and Agadez 35 overemphasise the perspectives of those who could produce written texts, renders this polyphony less audible in Sokoto than in Ader. There is no dominant viewpoint in Ader’s sources. Instead the multiple perspectives of masters and slaves, warriors and clerics, farmers and traders, funda- mentalist Muslims and syncretic followers of pagan and Muslim beliefs shape a sense of Self and Other in mutual, multi-relational interaction with each other. Ader’s pluralist society offers glimpses into the hitherto understudied past of a region that appears in the historiography mainly as a periphery of Sokoto or Agadez, and has rarely been analysed in its own terms.2 The availability of a rich corpus of Arabic sources and the narratives of nineteenth-century European travellers has endowed us with numerous studies of the Sokoto Caliphate and some of its main emirates.3 These studies foreground the viewpoints of Sokoto’s elites, including women.4 Alongside this rich tradition of research on Sokoto’s political history, another strand of enquiry has concentrated on the main Hausa trade networks. Here pre-colonial and colonial sources are so vividly precise that the members of specific networks can easily be identified for the purpose of research.5 Attempts have been made to write the histories of those who turned out to be the ‘losers’ in Sokoto’s épopée – who appear in the regional historiography under various generic guises such as Maguzawa, Asna, Anna, Arna, or Gwari.6 The autobiographical testimony of Baba of Karo conveys Baba’s experience of an intricate maze of relationships, offering a unique insight into everyday life in a Hausa rural community across the pre-colonial and colonial periods.7 Compared to the wealth of studies on Sokoto, less has been written on Agadez, and many researchers have 2 The most comprehensive contributions to the study of Ader have been made by the Nigerien historian Djibo Hamani (see particularly L’Adar Precolonial) and the French anthropologist Nicole Echard (see particularly L’Expérience du Passé). 3 To name a few: Hiskett, Sword of Truth; Hogben and Kirk-Greene, Emirates of Northern Nigeria; M. G. Smith, Government; Last, Sokoto Caliphate; Smaldone, Warfare; Stilwell, Paradoxes of Power. The list is long, especially if one considers doctoral theses and articles. 4 Boyd and Last, ‘The role of women’; Boyd, The Caliph’s Sister; Mack and Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad; Nast, Concubines; Bivin, Telling Stories. 5 Lovejoy, Caravans; Lovejoy, ‘Kambarin Beri Beri’; Dan Asabe, Comparative Biographies; Flegel, Biography of Madugu. 6 Leroux, ‘Animisme et Islam’; Greenberg, ‘Influence of Islam’; Barkow, ‘Muslim and Maguzawa’; Paiult, Histoire Mawri; Last, ‘History as religion’; Last, ‘Some economic’. 7 Baba’s testimony was collected and recorded by Mary Smith, Baba of Karo. Comp. by: BALA SUBRAMANIAN Stage: Revises1 Chapter No.: 2 Title Name: Rossi Date:24/6/15 Time:15:16:27 Page Number: 36 36 From Slavery to Aid looked at specific Tuareg groups rather than at their structured inter- action in one location.8 Outside these spotlights, the pre-colonial history of the Central Sahel remains scarcely understood, with a dearth of studies on the pre-nineteenth-century past.9 The tendency of African historiography to concentrate on a few, relatively better documented, regions has left areas such as Ader in the shadow, mentioned only, if at all, as peripheries – as in the quotation from Urvoy that opened this chapter. This yields a partial understanding of the ways in which centralised societies interacted with other social and political systems. And it says little, if anything, about the political rationales that existed in less densely populated regions. In the nine- teenth century Ader’s social and political organisation was polycentric, with localised hierarchies integrated into broader inter-ethnic hierarch- ies headed by Tuareg warrior elites. Criteria of prestige and technologies of power did not fully overlap between Tuareg warriors and clerics, Hausa chiefdoms, and Asna groups. Tuareg nomadic chiefs ‘broadcast’ their power not by controlling permanent infrastructure from fixed locations – as the rulers of centralised polities do – but by projecting the frequencies of their drums across vast spaces as they moved.10 One chief’s drumming exacted different responses from loyal subjects or fearful targets. Warrior elites were engaged in frequent raiding, and insecurity shaped the livelihood strategies of settled villagers. Even farmers, under the combined threat of raids and droughts, integrated constant mobility in their farming practices. And while Muslim clerics supported the military endeavours of one or another warrior group through their Islamic knowledge, Asna communities negotiated with spirits who accorded protection in exchange for sacrifices. These sparse and diverse groups, engaged in different productive activities, economic specialisa- tions, and religious practices, were joined into complex inter-ethnic stratified networks. Skewed alliances across groups with complementary skills increased safety. This chapter relies both on external sources and local testimonies, some of which are reproduced at length in the pages that follow. These 8 See in particular Bernus, ‘Recherches’. 9 This is a general tendency in African history; see Reid, ‘Past and presentism’. For a discussion of pre-Sokoto studies of Hausa-speaking societies, see Haour and Rossi, ‘Hausa identity’. 10 The notion of the state’s capacity to ‘broadcast’ its power is taken from Herbst, States and Power. Comp. by: BALA SUBRAMANIAN Stage: Revises1 Chapter No.: 2 Title Name: Rossi Date:24/6/15 Time:15:16:28 Page Number: 37 Between Sokoto and Agadez 37 texts reveal their authors’ perceptions of the life of their parents and grandparents. I triangulated testimonies collected from elders born in the first decades of the twentieth century and belonging to different groups. On some questions, I had to accept that there are different views about past events. Did slaves fight in wars? Testimonies differ, and in the pages that follow I chose to retain inconsistencies rather than create the illusion of uniformity. Disagreement across testimonies can be the outcome of actual variation: some slaves fought in some wars. But what about confusion over dates of battles, or over the identities of the parties who fought in battles?11 Confusion could not always be cleared up, but perspectival differences offered valuable insights into the experiences of different groups and individuals. Bias reveals as much as it hides. The men and women I talked to described wars in which their ances- tors had been involved. Memories of past status are inexorably tied up with the present status of speakers. It is possible to account for this, as we can account for the ways in which Islamic fervour coloured jihadist descriptions of pagan practices, or racism swayed colonial discussions of native custom. The testimonies discussed below alongside published sources bear witness to what Ader’s commoners learned from their elders and what they chose to transmit. Unlike the testimonies of the descend- ants of elites, they did not magnify the acts of noble warriors: they presented an experience of war that emphasises exposure to violence more than invincibility and glory. Ader’s societies retained a semi-autonomous status in relation to both Agadez and Sokoto. However they were constantly and directly con- fronted with an environment that functioned, at once, as a challenge and a resource. Ader’s environment imposed mobility. This influenced both forms of suzerainty and everyday strategies of production, repro- duction, trade, and resistance. In order to understand political and social relations it is therefore necessary to start from the land, and consider how survival or supremacy, as the case may be, were attained in Ader’s dry mesas. 11 I compared the testimonies I collected on the main pre-colonial battles with the testi- monies recorded by Edmond Bernus amongst the descendants of the former Tuareg chiefs. Only one testimony overlapped with the descriptions of battles provided by Bernus, ‘Récits historiques’,p.443 (battle of Derkatin), p.
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