Kanuri in Diaspora: A Historical Survey

Abstract

The study of place names which typically refers to the form of a place, its geographical quality, its situation in relation to water, its position, its flora or its fauna, often refers also to human uses to which the land was put; they commemorate events, or they are named after deities. Toponymic studies not only illustrate ethnic settlements but can also help identify discrete periods of the immigrations of people outside their land. There are assertions that the movement of Kanuri people outside the Kanuri land had not happened in a vacuum; they had left traces of settlements bearing Kanuri origin. This study was carried out to confirm or debunk the assertions in two Hausa states of Jigawa and Bauchi. Data was sought through interviews with residents in the places visited. The place names were subjected to linguistic analysis where Kanuri place name formatives {NP + –ri} (the place of the people of NP), {NP + –am} (the place of NP) and sound and meaning were sought. The result showed that there are a lot of villages, towns and rivers that bear Kanuri names though the way Hausa people of the areas pronounced them is different from the Kanuri originals. We found out that places like Katagum, Bulkachuwa, Alkaleri etc. in Bauchi state and Kiri Kasamma, Malam Madori, Birniwa etc. in Jigawa state were originally Kanuri names. Even though the study is just a survey of toponyms, it is hoped to open doors for other researches of languages in contact, language shift and maintenance and cross-cultural studies between the Kanuris and Hausas in the area under study.