Do you know that the Hausa tribe in its pure form is extremely rare these days? Historically, the Hausa (Habe) people occupied the whole of northern Nigeria and dominated the majority of the trade routes over the Sahara.
Both Hausa and non-Hausa people in the old North were competent farmers, skillful artisans, and shrewd businesspeople.
How the Hausa nation was founded
According to legend, the mythological ancestor of the Hausa people, Bayajidda, moved from Baghdad to the Kanem-Bornu Empire in the 9th or 10th century, when he got married to a princess.
Bayajidda had to leave his wife and their little child behind because of his father-in-law due to fights between them. He walked for a very long time until he eventually arrived in the city of Daura where he asked an elderly woman for water.
The woman told him she didn’t have any water and couldn’t get any at the community well because a snake was terrorizing the locals and only letting them get water once a week.
Bayajidda went to the well and confronted the snake in combat and killed it.
He received the Queen of Daura in marriage as payment, and she gave birth to a son he named Bawo. Biram’s founding father, Bawo, had six sons who went on to govern neighboring Hausa city-states. The Hausa bakwai (Hausa seven) states are these.
Before the jihad and the practice of Islam, the Hausa practiced magic by invoking magic and spirit possession. Hausa animism, also known as “Maguzanci” or “Bori,” is a pre-Islamic traditional religion practiced by the Hausa people of West Africa.
Priestesses engaged in ecstatic dancing rituals to guide and uphold the state’s governing houses. The royal priestess known as the Inna, or “Mother of us all,” headed a corps of Bori priestesses and their assistants.
Uthman dan Fodio’s Muslim jihad
But Uthman dan Fodio’s Muslim jihad, which started around 1804 and lasted for roughly 30 years, completely shattered Hausa’s control.
Fulani kings gradually took the place of the Hausas. Currently, the term “Hausa” is used more to describe a linguistic group than the actual, extremely rare Habe people.
Uthman dan Fodio, who also served as the first Sultan of Sokoto, the heart of the empire, conquered the traditional Hausa nations and laid the foundation for a powerful Muslim empire.
Except for the Nupe and other tribes in the Niger, Plateau, Benue, and Kogi, as well as the Kanuri of the kingdom of Bomo, the current Sultan, Emirs, and many other leaders in northern Nigeria may trace their ancestry to the great Fulani monarch.
