Thus Ruled Emir Abbas

Thus Ruled Emir Abbas is an important new research tool that reveals much about daily life in Kano, the wealthiest and most populous emirate of the African Sokoto Caliphate. It contains a selection of Kano Judicial Council documents, as well as their English translations, that deal with matters such as land disputes, tax collection disputes, and theft. These documents are invaluable resources that reveal much about Kano social, economic, and political life before the region came under the influence of colonial institutions, law, and language. This selection of records for more than 415 cases, along with their translations, will become essential reading for those interested in Nigeria’s past and will certainly become a standard work in the field of Nigerian history and anthropology.

Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.

A work of synthesis on plantation slavery in nineteenth century Sokoto caliphate, engaging with major debates on internal African slavery, on the meaning of the term "plantation," and on comparative slavery

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, with populations in Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana. Their long history of city-states and Islamic caliphates, their complex trading economies, and their cultural traditions have attracted the attention of historians, political economists, linguists, and anthropologists. The large body of scholarship on Hausa society, however, has assumed the subordination of women to men. Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century refutes the notion that Hausa women are pawns in a patriarchal Muslim society. The contributors, all of whom have done field research in Hausaland, explore the ways Hausa women have balanced the demands of Islamic expectations and Western choices as their society moved from a precolonial system through British colonial administration to inclusion in the modern Nigerian nation. This volume examines the roles of a wide variety of women, from wives and workers to political activists and mythical figures, and it emphasizes that women have been educators and spiritual leaders in Hausa society since precolonial times. From royalty to slaves and concubines, in traditional Hausa cities and in newer towns, from the urban poor to the newly educated elite, the "invisible women" whose lives are documented here demonstrate that standard accounts of Hausa society must be revised. Scholars of Hausa and neighboring West African societies will find in this collection a wealth of new material and a model of how research on women can be integrated with general accounts of Hausa social, religious, political, and economic life. For students and scholars looking at gender and women's roles cross-culturally, this volume provides an invaluable African perspective.

Dispensing Justice is designed to serve as a sourcebook of Islamic judicial practice and qadi judgments from the rise of Islam to modern times, drawing upon court records and qadi court records, in addition to literary sources. The volume fills a large gap in Islamic legal history. "Dispensing Justice" is designed to serve as a source book of Islamic judicial practice from the rise of Islam to modern times, drawing upon legal documents, qadi court records, archival marerials and literary souces. The volume fills a large ap in our understanding of Islamic legal history. (modified by Powers).

The conceptualization of land tenure in the precolonial Sudan : evidence and interpretation / Lidwien Kapteijns and Jay Spaulding -- New perspectives on the Diwan : state formation and the rise of Kanuri domination in the central Sudan (A.D. 1200-1600) / Augustin Holl -- By these means he is able to procure what he is most in need of : predatory accumulation and state formation in Bagirmi (1846-1877) / Stephen Reyna -- Building a state and struggling over land : the Taqali Kingdom, 1750-1884 / Janet Ewald -- Mud on the belly of the bull : land, power and state formation in eighteenth and nineteenth century Dar Fur / George Michael La Rue -- Land, agriculture, and social class formation in the Gibe Region, from the mid-nineteenth century to 1936 / Gulumu Gemeda -- Military elites in medieval Ethiopia / Merid Wolde Aregay -- The politics of the northern border : state control and the land tenure system in nineteenth century Ethiopia / Irma Taddia -- Landsale contracts as historical sources : methodology and analysis / Anders Bjorkelo -- The establishment of Gemjabét Kidandä Mehret Church in Däbrä Marqos, Gojjam Province / Donald Crummey and Daniel Ayana -- Waaqf-land in nineteenth century Wällo (Ethiopia) / Hussein Ahmad -- Land rights, commerce, and royal authority in Kano / Allan Christelow

In Farmers and the State in Colonial Kano, Steven Pierce examines issues surrounding the colonial state and the distribution of state power in northern Nigeria. Here, Pierce deconstructs the colonial state and offers a unique reading of land tenure that challenges earlier views of the role of indirect rule. According to Pierce, land tenure was the means the colonial government used to rule the local population and extract taxes from them, but it was also a political logic with a fundamental flaw and a Western bias. In Pierce's view, colonial representations of land tenure claimed to reflect precolonial systems of rule, but instead, fundamentally misrepresented farmers' experience. He maintains that this misrepresentation created a paradox at the core of the colonial state which persists into the present and helps to explain contemporary problems in African states. In this sweeping and eloquent account of African history, readers will find an extended genealogy of land law and taxation as well as rich material on the power of indigenous knowledge and the persistence of colonial systems of rule.