get these nets
Veteran
*snippet of doc.
Hawsawi: Uncovering the history of Saudi Arabia’s Afro-Arab Hausa community
A new documentary looks at the west African Muslim communities who escaped British colonialism and settled in the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th centuryHausa have assimilated into modern Saudi Arabia, and their ancestors helped to form its first government
By Adama J Munu
1 December 2022
The population of the Arabian Peninsula stems largely from the Bedouin tribes that have been living in the region for thousands of years. What’s less well known is that the area has long attracted migrants from across the Islamic world, including Muslim communities as far west as the Niger basin.
Sada Malumfashi is an artist and filmmaker from the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna. He specialises in Hausa culture and history, including that of the Hausa diaspora in the Arab world, who are the focus of his documentary Hawsawi, which means Hausa in Arabic.
Numbering more than 50 million, the largely Muslim west African ethnic group are spread across a number of countries, although are found mainly in Nigeria and Niger.
While the number of Hausa in modern Saudi Arabia is relatively small, the story of their origin provides a glimpse into an important episode in the group's history, namely the responses among west African Muslims to British colonialism.
At 29, Malumfashi has already established his intellectual authority on Hausa culture and heritage. He is the director of the Hausa International Book and Arts Festival, which was inaugurated last year around the theme of “Spaces” - exploring the “origins of Hausa literary spaces” and their “notions of gender, identity, culture and politics”.
Sada Malumfashi (centre) meets descendants of Hausa who moved to Saudi Arabia in the 19th century (courtesy: Sada Malumfashi)
Since then he has continued to work on preserving the vast and rich history of the Hausa.
“I read literature written in Hausa from the 30s and 40s. They were the first set of novels published in Nigeria,” Malumfashi tells Middle East Eye. “My father was a professor of Hausa literary history, so naturally, these are the stories I was surrounded with. It prompts the way I do things now.”
The British Empire and the ‘hijra’
In May 2022, Malumfashi was one of dozens of international artists who won a spot on the Albalad art residency in Saudi Arabia, organised by the country’s Ministry of Culture.“It was my first time going to Saudi Arabia. The perception I had of the country came from pilgrims who mainly visited Mecca and Medina,” he says.
It was during this visit that he first encountered Saudi citizens who were not of Arab origin.
“During my stay in Saudi Arabia, I was interested in understanding the Hausa diaspora who have been there for centuries, and I wanted to know the crux of that,” he says.
“I did not know how that research would take form, but I thought a documentary would be a good idea,” he tells Middle East Eye.
“I learnt that it [Saudi Arabia] is not limited to the holy sites and that there are other people of colour that are non-Arab. Also, it opened me up to the world generally.”
Migrations from western and sub-Saharan Africa to the Hijaz region of the Arabian Peninsula have been happening since the dawn of Islam.
Many arrived as pilgrims and decided to stay on, and others - particularly from the Swahili coast - were brought in by slave traders. The descendants of both these groups would eventually assimilate into local populations.
But the recent relationship between Saudi Arabia and communities from present-day Nigeria, however, can be understood against the backdrop of British colonialism in west Africa in the late 19th century.
British naval patrols preventing transatlantic slave trading, made illegal in the Empire from 1807, coincided with Britain’s growing desire for commerce in palm oil and cotton in west Africa.
A British map dated to 1736 shows European colonial interests in western Africa (Wikimedia)
Initially, this took the form of stronger relations with local powers, such as the Sokoto Caliphate, but it soon became about imperialist power-play. This came with the removal of local rulers and the propping up of puppet rulers.
Armed resistance, such as that led by Fulani Islamic scholar Usman dan Fodio, was one response, while religiously sanctioned migration, known as hijrah, was another.
“After the British came to Northern Nigeria, then part of the Sokoto Caliphate, a lot of religious scholars decided to emulate the Prophet Muhammad and perform hijrah to a place they thought was holier,” Malumfashi explains.
“The British came with instruments of colonisation, such as Christian missionaries. The idea these [Muslim] emigrants had was to travel east - to Mecca, Medina and Jeddah. They could already speak Arabic, so it was very easy for them to assimilate. In a way, it was both a forced and willing migration.”
The Hawsawi of Saudi Arabia are the descendants of the first wave of Hausa migrants to the Hijaz region.
There were other West African communities, such as the Fulani and Kanuri, who also migrated and who in Saudi Arabia go by the names Falaata and Barnawi respectively.
“From my research, I knew that there were Hausa people there who know about the language but cannot speak it," Malumfashi says. "But what struck me was, I thought they would be a peculiar group, a community separate from the Arabs, but they’ve assimilated and have now become Arab.”
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