¹ If a Hausa race exists rather than a homogeneous group of peoples who speak the Hausa language.Google Scholar

² Hausa; the Hausa Seven.Google Scholar

³ A complete account of this version is given in A Chronicle of Abuja, by Hassan, Alhaji and Na'ibi, Mallam Shuaibu (Lagos, 1962), 1–3.Google Scholar

⁴ Hausa; son of, equivalent to the Arabic ibn or bin.Google Scholar

⁵ Mai; the title of the Maghumi rulers of Bornu, whose dynasty started traditionally in the seventh century A.D., enduring to the beginning of the nineteenth.Google Scholar

⁶ Māgira; a title given to a lady of the royal house of Bornu. She need not be a daughter of the ruler but could be, for example, his eldest sister or mother.Google Scholar

⁷ South-east of Lake Chad.Google Scholar

⁸ Biram is now Biram-ta-Gabas in Hadejia Emirate, Kano Province, Northern Nigeria.Google Scholar

⁹ In one of the Hausa versions of Major Edgar's collection (Edgar, Frank, Litafi Na Tatsuniyoyi Na Hausa, 1 (Edinburgh, 1924), 224, she is naïvely recorded as saying, ‘Yesterday night a certain stranger stayed at my house with an animal; whether it was a bull or a horse I do not know’.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Hausa; the killer of Sarki.Google Scholar

¹¹ Sarki; an Emir; chief or headman of a town, village or of any guild or calling. (From The Rev. Bargery, G. P., A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary (London, 1934): the official Hausa dictionary.)Google Scholar

¹² Three are found in Major Edgar's collection. There is also a Bornu version given in Palmer, H. R., Sudanese Memoirs (Lagos, 1928), 111, 246, which ends with Bayajida's flight with the Māgira and the comment, ‘in later days the people of Bornu heard that Abū Yāzid had become Sultan of Daura’.Google Scholar

¹³ To the east of Lake Chad, later conquered by Bornu, now a province of Tchad Republic.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Abba Kyari is a title given to a prince of the Kanemi dynasty of Bornu, which commenced in the nineteenth century, and the use of it here merely indicates that a superior type of person came from the direction of Bornu. This version was recorded from hearsay at the beginning of the century and illustrates, first, how modern elements may intrude into oral traditions and, secondly, the usual (and understandable) Hausa ignorance of the significance of Bornu titles, an intricate and interesting subject.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Maina (Kanuri); son of a mai, a prince. This term was used during the time of the Maghumis and still is.Google Scholar

¹⁶ In Hausa; Sarkin Bagdaza.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The Hausa for slave is bawa, but there is no connexion with the name Bawo.Google Scholar

¹⁸ This description comes from Infāq al-maisür fī ta'rikh bilād at-takrür, the original of which is kept in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria. An English version is contained in Arnett, E. J., The Rise of the Sokoto Fulani, being a paraphrase and in some parts a translation of the Infakul Maisuri (Kano, 1922). The explorer Captain Clapperton visited Sultan Bello in Sokoto and copied large extracts of this important work which he later published in his account of his travels.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Another important historical work of which the first English translation was made in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XXXVIII (1908).Google Scholar See also Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, III, 99–132.Google Scholar

²⁰ Not far from Maradi in modern Niger Republic.Google Scholar

²¹ Trimingham, J. S., A History of Islam in West Africa (O.U.P., 1962), 526, fn. 2.Google Scholar

²² Palmer, H. R., The Bornu Sahara and Sudan (London, 1936), 273–4.Google Scholar

²³ In the middle of the eighth century most of the North African Berbers (who had fervently embraced Islam), finding that orthodox Sunni Islam denied them social or national equality with their Arab conquerors, went over to the more democratic Khārijite sect. This sect was divided into the moderate Ibādites and the radical Sufrites, soon nearly all to be absorbed into Ibādism. The Ibādites again had two factions, the dominant Wahbites and the less tolerant Nukkārites. To this latter, Abū Yāzid belonged. See Lewicki, T., ‘Z dziejow handlu transsaharyjskiego kupcy i misjonarze ibadyccy w zachodnim i srodkowym Sudanie w VIII–XII w’, Przeglad Orientalistyczny, no. 1 (1961), 5–6.Google Scholar Abū Yāzid's biography is in Khaldūn, Ibn, Histoire des Berbéres et des Dynasties Musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrionale, traduit par le Baron de Slane, 4 vols. (Paris, 1852–1956);Google Scholar and Hammādū, Ibn, Histoire des Rois Obeidites (les Califes Fatimites), traduit par M. Vonderheyden (Alger-Paris, 1927)Google Scholar The Bornu version of the legend (see fn. 12) gives a wealth of details, including names, which obviously bear no relation to historical truth, having perhaps been inserted by storytellers. Abū Yazid is called the Said Abdurahman ibn Abdullahi, called Abū Yazid, ibn Abdullahi, the Sultan of Baghdad (Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, III, 549)Google Scholar. This could possibly be a reference to the Persian ‘Abd ar-Rabmān ibn Rustam, the founder of the Rustamid imamate in the eighth century, to which rallied all the Berbero-'Ibādites in the face of the Arab invasion of Ifriqiya and the Maghreb.

²⁴ Gao according to the Ibn Khaldūn, Tademekket according to Ibn Hammādū.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibn Khaldūn gives the names of three of the sons as Yazīd (hence Abū Yazīd, Father of Yazīd), Fadl and Ayyūb. He also records the interesting fact that Abū Yazid before his death wished to escape into the Sudan but some of his allies refused.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Bivar, A. D. H. and Shinnie, P. L., ‘Old Kanuri Capitals’, J.A.H. III, no. 1 (1962), 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ It is difficult even to speculate on who the Bornu mai was when Bayajida is supposed to have arrived in Bornu. Barth has the mai Katuri as reigning throughout the tenth century! (Travels in Central Africa, 11 (New York, 1857), 634)Google Scholar although Palmer (The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, 125)Google Scholar dates him as ca. 900. Urvoy, (Histoire de l'Empire du Bornou (Paris, 1949) 26)Google Scholar gives the Bornu rulers during the tenth century as: Aritso 893 to 942, Katuri 942 to 961, Ayoma (Biyoma) 961 to 1010, If he is Correct, and if the remnants of Abū Yazid's forces did in fact seek refuge in Bornu, they would probably have arrived during Katuri's reign. The Bornu version of the Bayajida legend (see note 12) gives the mai as Idris ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad, but, as already stated, this and other details have been inserted later. The first real Idris to rule was Idris Ngalemi who reigned from 1353 to 1376.

²⁸ Beriberi is the name by which the Hausa and others describe the Kanuri of Bornu and it is generally supposed to be derived from the term Berber, although Urvoy (Histoire de l'Empire de Bornou, 142, fn.)Google Scholar argues that Berber is an Arabic generalization of the Greek and Latin barbaroi and barbari, terms unknown to the Berbers themselves.

²⁹ Buchanan, Angus, Sahara (London, 1926), 116–17.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Bornu version of Bayajida's advent (see note 12) mentions that on arrival in Bornu he camped ‘near a mountain in the south’. This is consistent with the Kawar area but not farther south or east of Lake Chad.Google Scholar

³¹ Lewicki, Z dziegow handlu transsaharyjskiego, 16–17.Google Scholar

³² Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 107.Google Scholar

³³ Lewicki, Les Ibadites en Tunisie au Moyen Age, 12. Paper presented to a conference held in Accademia Polacca di Scienze e Lettere in Rome, 17 February 1958.Google Scholar

³⁴ Charlesworth, M. P., Trade-routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1924), 134.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibn Khaldūn relates how the ass was a gift to Abū Yazid during his campaigns.Google Scholar

³⁶ For a description of the limes and fossatum, the two components of frontier defence against desert raiders in Roman North Africa, see Warmington, B. H., The North African Provinces from Diocletian to the Vandal Conquest (Cambridge, 1954), 20–6.Google Scholar

³⁷ From the legends it seems that two other groups may have moved on to Kanem and Bagirmi north-east and south-east of Lake Chad.Google Scholar

³⁸ The origin and etymology of the term Hausa is obscure. Neither Ibn Battūta nor Leo Africanus, who travelled in the Sudan in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, mentioned the name in their works, nor did Ibn Khaldūn, a contemporary of Ibn Battūta.Google Scholar

³⁹ In Hausa versions of the legends the word arna, meaning pagan in the sense of heathen, is used, rather than kafiri, meaning a non-Muslim.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Burton compares the old question in Southern Europe, ‘Are you a Christian or a Protestant?’ with the situation which existed between the Sunnīs and the Shī'ah, when commenting on a story in which a spy hired to murder the ruling Khalifa, when captured, replied, ‘No, I am a Rejector’, to the Khalifa's plaintive ‘Art thou not a Muslim?’. The Shī'ites are known as the Rejectors from their saying ‘Inna rafidnāhum—‘Truly we have rejected them’—of the Sunnīs. See Illustrated Edition of The Arabian Nights, translated by Captain Sir Burton, R. F., vol. III (London, 1897), notes on pp. 171 and 207;Google Scholar and also the same author's Pilgrimage to Medinah and Meccah, vol. II (London, 1897), fn. to p. 4.Google Scholar

⁴¹ -uwa or -awa is a common plural for proper names in Hausa and in the Central Sudan: thus Hausamen are Hausawa and Frenchmen are Faransawa.Google Scholar

⁴² The term Ziduwa could also, but with less probability, have referred to: Zaidīs—unlikely as this sect flourished mainly in the Yemen; Zindīq, applied to any heretic or atheist but in particular one who read Zend books; Zend, a Zoroastrian; Didd, an Arabic word meaning enemy.Google Scholar

⁴³ The appointment of governors by Abū Yazīd is mentioned by Ibn Khaldūn.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In the diwan of Bornu rulers reproduced by Paimer, the comment is made: ‘From Sultain Saif to Tsilim none had come into the world black, but all were light, like the Arabs’, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, p. 579.Google Scholar The legendary founder of the Maghumi dynasty of Bornu was the Himyarite prince Saif ibn Dhī Yazan, and the Maghumi mais are called Saifawa or Saifuwa.

⁴⁵ Norris, H. T., ‘Yemenis in the Western Sahara,’ J.A.H. III, no. 2 (1962), 318.Google Scholar The dam burst during the sixth century A.D., probably before 570, giving rise to an Arab saying, ‘They were gone and scattered like Saba’ referring to the town which was evacuated at the bursting.

⁴⁶ Barka; a salutation, greeting or congratulation (Bargery's Hausa Dictionary). -mu is the first person plural possessive. Barka is derived from a Berber term, baraka, denoting a quality of holiness in people or articles. The Prophet Mubarnmad was possessed of the greatest baraka. High office may be a sign of baraka, which is further attributed to saints' tombs and a variety of plants and objects, including trees and seed corn, bread, wells, springs, stones, rocks and caves. Barka is particularly used as a greeting in Kano and is widely used also in Kanuri, spoken in Bornu. The town name Barka, where Bagoda is supposed to have sojourned on his peregrinations before arriving in Kano, is also fairly certainly derived from this term.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Palmer, The Bornu Sahara and Sudan, 273.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Kasagu is the name of the well which is still pointed out in Daura as the place where the serpent Sarki was killed. Also in Daura may be seen a knife and sword, reputedly Bayajida's.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Edgar, Litafi Na Tatsuniyoyi Na Hausa, 1, 223.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Al-Baidhawi, , Baidhawi Commentarius in Coranum, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1846–1978).Google Scholar

⁵¹ For a detailed history of this river see Hallam, W. K. R., Komadugu Yobe (Nigeria no. 76, 03 1963), 4–15.Google Scholar

⁵² The other names seem to be derived from Hausa phrases in the same way as the names of Bayajida's three sons.Google Scholar

⁵³ See note 36, and Hitti, Philip K., History of the Arabs (London, 1964), 9, II, and 214.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 85.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Za Alayaman = Saif al-Yamani = Saif the Yemenite.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Mahmoud Kati ben El-Hadj El-Motaoukkel, Tarikh el-Fettach (Texte Arabe et Traduction Française par O. Houdas et M. Delafosse), 1913–1914.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The Greeks' first colony was Cyrene, founded by Battus supposedly at the instance of the Deiphic oracle in these terms: ‘O Battus…the lord Apollo sends you to Libya, nurse of flocks, to build a city rich in fleeces.…’ See Herodotus, The Histories, Book IV.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Palmer, Sudanese Memoirs, III, 99–504.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 32.Google Scholar