What’s in a (bride) price?

Within the first chapters of reading Baba’s life story, it becomes clear just how important the exchange of gifts was (and probably still is) to the institution of marriage among her people. Now, we know that across several communities in the African continent, part of the marriage involves the groom paying a certain amount to…

On concubinage…continued

If you thought concubines are a legacy of the past, guess what? When the British came with their colonialism, they imposed prohibitions on slavery in Northern Nigeria. This was only halfhearted though, as the British policy implicitly accepted the patriarchal nature of concubinage. Colonial courts had to deal with cases involving slave women, some of…

Who were….all these women?

If there’s one thing that came out from reading about Nana Asma’u, it’s more women who we will probably never know more about outside a few sentences in diverse literature. Let’s share this frustration together. Nana Asma’u wrote in 1837 of “Joda Kawuuri, Quranic scholar who benefited people in many towns…Yar Hindu the Quaranic scholar…

A lasting legacy

A Month in Western Sudan Beginnings: Degel and the Hijra Nana Asma’u was just one among other women who wrote in her time. Five of her sisters, and her cousin were writers and their works remain today but there may be countless others whose works have been lost in time. Nana Asma’u’s name is remembered…

Beginnings: Degel and the Hijra

“Muslim women! Do not listen to the speech of those who are misguided and who sow the seed of error in the heart of another; they deceive you when they stress obedience to your husbands without telling you of obedience to God and His Messenger (May God show him bounty and grant him salvation), and…