The aim of this paper is to examine one particular Hausa craft, tailoring, which, far from being eliminated, continues to play an important role, albeit in a changed form, in the economic life of the Hausa. I shall confine my attention largely to the situation prevailing among the tailors of Kano City, the ancient core settlement of what today has become the Kano Metropolitan Area (K.M.A.), the largest urban area of northern Nigeria and the third largest city in Nigeria.

The paper will concentrate upon the present-day (c. 1975–6) organization of tailors in the old city ofKano, drawing most of my illustrative material from three Kano City wards which either have been, or continue to be, noted for their tailoring activities. Major emphasis will be placed on the highly differentiated character of the tailoring process, variations in the organization of production, training and recruitment of tailors, markets served, and the division of labour.

HAUSALAND AND THE HAUSA PEOPLE

From the tenth to the nineteenth century Hausaland saw the development of a number of autonomous city-states, each of which imposed a measure of political and economic control over a largely rural farming population whose surplus product was extracted by a ruling class of kings or chiefs (sarakuna), titled officials (masu sarauta) of both free and servile origin, and a wide range of titled and non-titled subordinates (Fuglestad 1978; Hogben and Kirk-Greene 1966; Hunwick 1971; Sutton 1979; A. Smith 1970,1971; M. G. Smith 1978).