The Origin of the Name ‘Hausa’

Abstract

Opening Paragraph In his introductory notes to Bargery's dictionary, Westermann summarizes the early historical records of the Hausa-speaking peoples and, in particular, discusses the name ‘Hausa’ itself, without forming any theory as to its provenance. He points out that, apart from a reference to Ḥauṣiyin by Ibn Sa‘id, an Andalusian Arab writer who died in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the first reference to the word is four centuries later, in the Tarikh-es-Sudan. Ibn Sa‘id incidentally—if we are to believe Ibn Khallikan—got no nearer to the Western Sudan than Tunis, so it seems that his information was as secondhand as that of most of our other Arab authorities for the area. In the interim four centuries, though Ibn Batuta uses such names of individual Hausa chiefdoms as Kūbar (Gobir), the only generic name used was by Al Maqrizi, an Egyptian, whom Hiskett suggests got the name from some Bornu source, without knowing much about the people it referred to. This was Afnū, which is still the name used for the Hausa by the Kanuri and other related peoples of the Chad area. While making no suggestion himself as to a possible source of origin, at the end of the first section of his notes, Westermann makes reference to the conquest of Hausaland by Muhammadu Askia of Songhai, and to his ultimate repulse by Muhammadu Kanta, chief of Kebbi, in 1513.

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