Hadija's Story

Harmony O'Rourke

Description

In 1952, a woman named Hadija was brought to trial in an Islamic courtroom in the Cameroon Grassfields on a charge of bigamy. Quickly, however, the court proceedings turned to the question of whether she had been the wife or the slave-concubine of her deceased husband. In tandem with other court cases of the day, Harmony O'Rourke illuminates a set of contestations in which marriage, slavery, morality, memory, inheritance, status, and identity were at stake for Muslim Hausa migrants, especially women. As she tells Hadija's story, O'Rourke disrupts dominant patriarchal and colonial narratives that have emphasized male activities and projects to assert cultural distinctiveness, and she brings forward a new set of women's issues involving concerns for personal prosperity, the continuation of generations, and Islamic religious expectations in communities separated by long distances.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
1. "Worthy Subjects"
2. "People of the North"
Part II
3. Slave or Daughter?
4. First Reversal: Marriage and Enslavement
5. Second Reversal: Death and Survival
6. Third Reversal: Conflict and Judgment
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• African Studies
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• África
• History of Africa
• West
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 13 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253023896
• Langue: English

Extrait

Hadija s Story
Hadija s Story
Diaspora, Gender, and Belonging in the Cameroon Grassfields
Harmony O Rourke
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Harmony O Rourke
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O Rourke, Harmony, author.
Title: Hadija s story : diaspora, gender, and belonging in the Cameroon Grassfields / Harmony O Rourke.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016034703| ISBN 9780253023759 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253023834 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH : Hausa (African people)-Cameroon. | Hausa (African people)-Marriage customs and rites. | Women, Hausa-Cameroon-Social conditions. | Marriage customs and rites-Cameroon. | Islamic marriage customs and rites-Cameroon.
Classification: LCC DT 571. H 38 O 76 2017 | DDC 306.8108993706711-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034703
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
For
MY HUSBAND AND MY SONS
Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE
1 Worthy Subjects
2 People of the North
PART TWO
3 Slave or Daughter?
4 First Reversal: Marriage and Enslavement
5 Second Reversal: Death and Survival
6 Third Reversal: Conflict and Judgment
CONCLUSION
Glossary of Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
AS A WORK THAT EXTENDS FROM MY DISSERTATION RESEARCH , Hadija s Story has been at the heart of my professional life for some ten years, undergoing several rounds of reconceptualization through continuing research and especially from insightful interventions and assistance from individuals at every stage.
This book would have not been completed without the wisdom and calm encouragement of my mentor, Emmanuel Akyeampong. Emmanuel s unflinching support throughout graduate school and his continuing guidance have been central to my development as a scholar. I thank him for instilling in me the value of careful, creative historical interpretation and the perspective required to make meaningful transformations in one s scholarship in light of others knowledge and criticisms. I also thank him for championing me as I took on the additional roles of wife and mother while completing my graduate work and beginning my career in the academy. Suzanne Preston Blier, Caroline Elkins, Heidi Gengenbach, John Hutchison, Jim McCann, Parker Shipton, and Robert Travers were all essential in shaping my knowledge of African history, Hausa society and language, and European imperial history, and I owe each of them a debt of gratitude for the time, insights, and kindness they offered to me.
Over the years, I have presented portions of this work at conferences and workshops in the United States and Cameroon. I am especially grateful to the following individuals for their constructive comments and encouragement at these events: Idrissou Alioum, Nicodemus Fru Awasom, Edmund Burke, Toyin Falola, Walter Hawthorne, Jan Jansen, Arash Khazeni, Martin Klein, Anthony Lee, Paul Lovejoy, Kenda Mutongi, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Walter Nkwi, Ismail Rashid, Mohammed Bashir Salau, Ahmadou S hou, Sanjay Subramanyam, Meredith Terretta, and Bruce Whitehouse. Willibroad Dze-Ngwa, Verkijika Fanso, and Christraud Geary also provided excellent advice on researching Hausa communities in Cameroon.
I extend my sincerest thanks to Moses Ochonu and Elisha Renne for their thoughtful and generous readers reports, which were obtained by Indiana University Press. Their feedback had a transformative effect on numerous aspects of the manuscript, and I cannot thank them enough for their scholarly service. For her sagacity and thoughtfulness, I thank Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press in guiding me through the publication of this book. Sarah Jacobi, Darja Malcolm-Clarke, Joyce Rappaport, and Paige Rasmussen have also been instrumental, as well as Cyndy Brown, who provided the index.
No historian could complete her work without the assistance of archivists and librarians. I wish to thank the archivists at the National Archives in Yaound , the Northwest Region Ministry of Culture in Bamenda, and especially the late Prince Henry Mbain, who had served as head archivist of the National Archives in Buea. Prince s intimate knowledge of and dedication to the documents in his possession were exceptional. I extend my deepest appreciation to the Alkali at Ndop, Alhaji Mohamadu Bello, for trusting me with the trove of historical information on Muslims in the Grassfields. I also wish to acknowledge the late Alhaji Abdu Gidado, who directed me to the Alkali court and its records. Guy Thomas not only guided my research at the Basel Mission, mission 21 archives in Switzerland, but he also introduced me to the basics of Grassfields history. Lastly, I thank Bruno Schelhaas at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig for assisting my research on Ernst Vollbehr and his paintings.
I extend my deepest thanks to all of the men and women in the Grass-fields who graciously welcomed me into their homes and into their pasts. I especially wish to recognize Aishatu Ibrahim, whose quilt designs inspired the geometric symbol marking section breaks throughout the book. Hadijah Sali was present with me at nearly every interview conducted for this study. Not only was she a trusted interpreter, but she has also become one of my dearest friends. The support of Sali Buba, Usumanu Buba, Habiba Usumanu, and Elvis Ismael Nsaidzeka has also been indispensable over the years.
Multiple funding agencies made this research possible. Long-term fieldwork and archival research in Cameroon, the United Kingdom, and France were funded by the U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award, and supplemented by the Harvard University Frederick K. Sheldon Research Fellowship. Funding from Harvard University s Department of History and Committee on African Studies, as well as Boston University s FLAS program also contributed. Over the past six years, numerous Pitzer College Faculty Research Awards and a Mellon-funded Pitzer College Junior Faculty Research Grant provided opportunities to conduct follow-up fieldwork and made the completion of this manuscript possible.
Some material in this book appeared first in other formats. Text from two articles in History in Africa: A Journal of Method are reprinted with permission from Cambridge University Press: Native Foreigners and the Ambiguity of Order and Identity: The Case of African Diasporas and Islamic Law in British Cameroon 39 (2012): 97-122, and Beyond the World of Commerce: Rethinking Hausa Diaspora History through Marriage, Distance, and Legal Testimony 43 (June 2016): 141-167. The revised reprint of the article, I am not his slave : Contesting Marriage among the Hausa on a Cameroonian Frontier, c. 1920-1955, is herein included in this book with the permission of the publisher, Africa World Press, Inc., from the book edited by Toyin Falola and Bessie House-Soremekun, Gender, Sexuality and Mothering in Africa , 2011.
A scholar producing her first book never does so without the support, advice, and necessary humor of friends and colleagues. Since 2003, I have benefited from the friendship and wisdom of Sara Byala, Denise Ho, Adam Ewing, Rob Karl, Betsy More, Vernie Oliveiro, Myles Osborne, Juliet Wagner, and Ben Waterhouse. At Pitzer College, I am grateful to members of the History Field Group-Carina Johnson, Stu McConnell, Daniel Segal, and Andre Wakefield. Their mentorship and commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarship have been essential to my growth as a scholar-teacher. I thank Ahmed Alwishah, Bill Anthes, Brent Armendinger, Will Barndt, Michelle Berenfeld, Tim Berg, Menna Bizuneh, Nigel Boyle, Geoff Herrera, Alex Juhasz, Azamat and Barbara Junisbai, Jessica McCoy, Susan Phillips, Brinda Sarathy, Andrea Scott, Erich Steinman, Emma Stephens, Ruti Talmor, Lako Tongun, Rachel VanSickle-Ward, and Kathy Yep for their friendship and support as I worked through manuscript revisions and the publication process. I also wish to acknowledge two students who directly participated in the successful completion of this project: Jade Finlinson for her research and German translation skills, and Patcharaporn Nam Maneerat who created the maps.
This book has been a family endeavor. My sister, Sadie O Rourke, paid her own way to Cameroon to share my research experience with me: one would be hard-pressed to find an archival research assistant who approached her work with as much alacrity as comedy. Cole O Rourke, Tricia Luong, John Tyson, and my aunts and uncles have provided moral support during this long writing process. I thank my father, Daniel O Rourke, for sharing his passion for history with me at an early age and for his ardent support of my work. The encouragement and labor of my mother and my in-laws-Susan Troyer, Nancy Luong, and Jimmy Luong-have allowed me to concent