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Abstract
This paper translates and discusses the texts of three Sunni antiShia songs in Hausa, all produced by religious singers of Kano, Nigeria, from the mid-1990s onwards. Politically, these literary items have to be located in the competitive environment of Kano Islam, and culturally, in a long-standing poetic tradition where invective and satire (Hausa zambo; Ar. hija') naturally emerged as the counterpart to the genres of praise and eulogy (Hausa yabo; Ar. madīh). Read in chronological order, these three texts display a crescendo that reflects different stages in the development of popular Nigerian Sunni attitudes towards the local Shiite leader El Zakzaky and his movement: disillusionment; theological stereotyping; social stigma.
Keywords: Shiism in Nigeria; Hausa Islamic songs; invective; satire; hija'.
1.Introduction1
Our paper is not a linguistic or literary study, but a historicalanthropological introduction to the songs composed by Sunni singers against Shiism. The main questions the paper tries to address are related to the role invective and satirical songs play in the cultural and political history of Islam in Kano. In particular, we will try to show how different historical phases and changing dynamics of Sunni/ Shiite polemic in the country, are reflected in songs that belong to the same genre but date to different epochs.
The literature on intra-Islamic polemics in northern Nigeria is very vast.2 With very few exceptions, however, existing studies have focused primarily on the theological treatises that were written, mainly in Arabic, by the scholarly class to argue against the doctrines of rival groups. While such polemical treatises (in Arabic, radd) in prose make use of a lively style that does not exclude occasional abuses labelled at the opponent, and in fact, commonly recurs to word play, ridicule, and slurs,3 the main register in these texts remains theological and argumentative rather than emotional. In a culture that lays a strong emphasis on literary and oratorial skills, however, another major arena for the contestation of Islamic doctrines, practices and identities has been, side by side radd literature, the composition of invective or satirical songs aimed at a rival group.
Satirical song/poetry (wakar zambo) has an old history in Hausaland,4 which does not necessarily reflect an Islamic content. As in many other African languages, where praise poetry (in Hausa, wakaryabo)...