This is probably my last piece as a permanent resident of the ancient city of Kano — my home for the last two years.
I have had a good run in my tour of Kano, a place of legends I first heard sitting at my grandmother’s feet to listen to folk stories together with many of my relatives in one of those days you can remember only as a paranormal dream from the ages.
I remember one of the tales being about a contest between the chiefs general of ancient Kano and Daura. I devoured every shred of literature I could find about Kano growing up, and this became an obsession after I stumbled on a treatise on the origination myths of the Hausa people. I learned that the Hausa folklore about Bayajidda, and that Daura was not the cradle of Hausa civilization. The Hausa origination myth was effectively plagiarised from the epic of Abraham, the biblical patriarch of the Arabs and Jews by blood, but also the spiritual patriarch of Jews, Christians, Muslims and Saba’ens.
You could effectively tell both stories by the active transposition of characters, cities and themes from both the Ishmaelite and Israelites accounts of the same story. If you replace Abraham with Bayajidda, you replace Bawo with either Ishmael or Isaac, then do the same for “Karbe-gari” with either Ishmael or Issac, Egypt with Borno, replace Baghdad with Babylon, replace Sarah with Magira, replace the seven tribes with 12 tribes on either branch. In the Hausa version, there were seven tribes from each branch of the same family – that is the Hausa Bakwai and Banza Bakwai dichotomy. Hausa Bakwai literally means the “Legitimate Seven”. Banza Bakwai means the “Illegitimate Seven”. In the original version, there were 12 tribes of Israel, and also 12 tribes of Ishmael. Effect the proposed transposition, and you would have told two complete stories at the same time.
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To Jews and Christians, the 12 tribes of Israel, from where the Jews descended, constitute the legitimate branch while the Arabs who descended from the line of Ishmael, constitute the illegitimate branch. For one thing, and this is something both sides agree on, Ishmael was the eldest son of Abraham. By the principles of primogeniture, the Arabs are therefore the legitimate branch. Of course, both sides have reasons and basis for their versions… and I make no pretense that the side I belong to as an Abrahamic Muslim absolutely has to be right and the other side must be wrong. Wal-lahu a’lam!
I had also learned, beforehand, that the Hausa, were originally known as the “Maguzza” people who were actually ethnic Nubians who migrated into what is now Hausaland, basically the North West, from what is now Ethiopia. Sometime down the road, the Islamised Hausas found it necessary to distinguish themselves from their Hausa animist kinsmen who called their beliefs and ritual practices “Maguzanci”.
The first settlements of the Maguzza people were in Kano and Rano, and from there they spread further west. The furthest reach was the Kabi Kingdom, peopled by the Kabi tribe, who belonged to the Banza Bakwai branch of the origination myth. I come from Kebbi myself, and my mother is from Argungu, from the Kabi tribe. My father comes from Jega, which was founded by the Zamfarawa people, who are another Banza Bakwai tribe, but is actually part Fulani and part Bagobiri. The Gobir Hausa tribe belongs to the Hausa Bakwai branch. His own parents were not from Jega, they settled in Jega after migrating from Gwandu.
I also found out there are tangible traces of what is the Hausa culture in what is now a certain with certain neo-Nubian tribe in today’s Ethiopia. There are still names and architectural symbols connecting Nubian culture with its Hausa descendants.
I remember visiting Kano sometime in 95 or 96 when I was about 5 or 6, and only remember running around and climbing trees with family friends my family was visiting in Kano. Then I remember visiting as a teenager with my mother and siblings for sallah shopping sometime in 2006. I don’t remember anything from this particular trip for whatever reason. I’ve always thought of Kano as this exotic metropolis, a place of legends and a mecca of sorts. I reveled the idea of going to Kano.
I’ve visited Kano regularly for work since 2018, before moving here permanently in 2021, to implement an education development project in partnership with the Kano State Government. I have had the time of my life in Kano.
The only problem is that at some point it stopped being the dreamy fairytale a kid imagines. The way I see it, I’ve had more adventures both in terms of quantity and quality in my three years residency in Kano than the rest of the 31 years I spent in the other places I’ve lived across the length of this country. But this outcome is a function of global events that occurred in the last three years all over the world, not specifically that of a residency in Kano or life in Kano. This function mirrors the practices of some people who want to recall where they were when a certain cataclysmic event occurred.
Today, we stand before a very credible threat of a WWIII. Albert Einstein once said that he does not know exactly what weapons will be unleashed by WWIII, but that he knew that WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones. That is a reference to the fact WWIII with a full-fledged nuclear exchange between world military powers will literally send humanity back to the Stone Age. That subject is something so MAD that it has won the world peace instead of war. Somehow, the minute two warring sides each developed nuclear explosives together with the means to deliver them against chosen targets, a very lasting peace will break out between these two sides.
Yes, there could be an ongoing cold war between the sides, but it will never go hot because of how MAD (Mutually-assured Destruction) it would be. If you have nuclear capabilities, and your enemy has same, you can rest assured that the minute you launch an obliterating nuclear war, you too will certainly be utterly obliterated. It won’t even just be a Pyrrhic victory it is going to be “mutuwar-kasko”. Everyone loses. It is a lose-lose situation which precludes any zero-sum outcome highlighted by survival.
Living in Kano today, and being alive in the world today… that has been one hell of a ride. I am in the phase of life when you realise, or at least think, that you have seen everything, and have heard everything. It was a perfect storm of wonder.
To be continued.
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