The transformation of Katsina (1400-1883)
Date
1981
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press Ltd
Abstract
■ The emergence of the Sarauta system: c. 1400—1684; ■ The pattern of settlement in the eighteenth century; ■ The society of Katsina in the late eighteenth century; ■ The state in the late eithteenth century; ■ The overthrow of the Sarauta system; ■ The demise of the Jama’a of Katsina; ■ The establishment of the Emirate; ■ Outlines of the emirate system; ■ Changing patterns of settlement and economy 1808—1883;
Description
This study is concerned with the nature of the historical process which
over a period of five hundred years, (c. 1400—1883), produced the
successive political systems to which the inhabitants of an area of the
West African Sudan which has come to be known as ‘Katsina’ belonged.
This area is now a part of the Savannah and Sahel regions of Nigeria
and the Republic of Niger.
The study was conducted primarily to discover whether this process was
essentially composed of the movements and conflicts of racial, tribal
and ethnic'units and groups and their armies. For this is the conventional
and still widely-held view of the historical development of the people
of the area, and indeed of the whole of the African continent. It is doubts
about this view and concern about its contemporary political significance
which led to this study.
These doubts arose in the first place over the theoretical issue of what
meaningful categories and terms are to be used in the definitions of the
substantive units of this historical process. Or, more concretely, the issue
of the actual meaning at particular historical moments and in particular
historical contexts, of categories and terms like ‘Hausa’, ‘Fulani’, ‘Barebare’, ‘Nupe’, ‘Katsinawa’, ‘Sakkwatawa’, ‘al-Barnawi’, ‘al-Sudani’ and
many others. And secondly, because of the way the conventional view is
contradicted in many respects by the primary, especially internal, sources
of the history of the area.