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close interactions including intermarriages and trades which happened alongside the wars and slavery. Akinade (2014), in his article Sacred Rumbling (2013), also places emphasis on the positive Christian-Muslim relations that has existed in Nigeria, despite the many conflicts.
Akinde (2013) argues that “dialogue of Life” is practiced in Nigeria whereby Christians and Muslims collaborate and interact very closely in their practical everyday life on the streets, shared homes and markets. They exchange felicitations during important religious occasions, and would attend significant occasions to support each other, such as baptisms and weddings.
I agree with Akinade’s (2013) observation that this form of dialogue is rarely given much attention or recognition by scholars. Evidence of positive dialogues of life have been widely ignored because studies on interfaith relations tend to focus on northern Nigeria where such relations are problematic and violent, and where scholarship is orientated towards offering solutions to conflicts. The more peaceful relations Akinade (2013) highlights are characteristic of groups such as the Yoruba in Western Nigeria, for whom close familial interactions between Christians and Muslims are a way of life and not necessarily constructed as “dialogue” following crises. Among the Yoruba, unlike many groups in northern Nigeria, the bond of ethnicity appears to be more important than religious differences (Osaghie and Suberu, 2005). Commendable periods of peaceful relations have been experienced in northern Nigeria as well, but the seeming ease with which violent conflicts recurrently surface raises questions about the nature of such peaceful moments.
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worked to build a pious and ideal Islamic state like that which the prophet Muhammad established in ancient Arabia (2008:61). Some historians have argued that although Dan Fodio and his successors did not realize the desired Islamic state, their achievements were remarkable.
Their conquest and imposition of a central political and religious authority across formerly independent Hausa states homogenized the people into a single political and linguistic unit.
Thus, when the British conquered northern Nigeria in 1903, the region had become primarily identified with Islam, and Islamic piety had become a key marker of Hausa-Fulani identity (Ochonu, 2008:100; Falola and Heaton, 2008:61). Against a popular narrative which refers to the Jihad as the beginning of Muslim efforts to Islamize Nigeria, scholars such as Miles (2003:53) and Loimeier (2003:245) argue that the primary goal of the jihad was not the conversion of non- Muslims but a reformation of adulterated Islam. Yet, the question remains, what was the implication of the reform for non-Muslim minorities in the area and why is this moment ever- present in victimization narratives of Christian groups, as Kukah and McGarvey (2013) argue?
The jihad caused immense changes in the inter-ethnic relations between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and the numerous independent ethnic minorities in northern Nigeria. The historians Galadima and Turaki (2001) observe that these groups had no centralized political systems and adhered to different forms of indigenous religions, but gradually found themselves in constant resistance of efforts by Muslims to proselytize among them, and relations between them and Muslims gradually became dominated by religion (2001:91). The Jihad also engendered slave raids for the Trans-Saharan slave trade and to meet the needs of the expansive caliphates and its major emirates, including Zaria (Zazzau) located in the present-day Kaduna; and because Islam does not allow the enslavement of Muslims, the Middle Belt’s pagan groups increasingly became the legitimate target for slave raids (Kazah-Toure, 1999; Galadima and Turaki, 2001; Abdulkadir, 2011).
To the south of Zaria were “pagan” ethnic groups now known as Southern Kaduna groups (Okpanachi, 2010:21). Throughout the Southern Kaduna area there were also Hausa-Fulani Muslim enclaves, mostly of traders and Fulani herdsmen who were gradually organizing themselves into small polities (Smith, 1960). Prior to the 1800s ethnic groups in Southern Kaduna lived in small independent and scattered villages and communities. The only authorities in these communities were elderly members and family heads with no centralized authority even
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at the village level. According to Rotimi Suberu, this diffusion of power, coupled with their inferior technology and lack of military strength “rendered them relatively defenseless in the face of Hausa-Fulani expansionism and imperialism” (1996:48). During the Dan Fodio jihad, the Jema’a emirate emerged in the Southern Kaduna area as a vassal state of Zaria emirate. Complex forms of relationships emerged between the non-Muslim groups of the area and the Hausa-Fulani Muslims of Zaria; the Hausa-Fulani enclaves in the area gradually became the economic and political centers of Southern Kaduna (Smith, 1960; Suberu, 1996). These changes resulted in religious and socio-political unrest as Southern Kaduna groups increasingly felt threatened and feared what the implications of such developments might be for them (Goifa, 2011).
The Kaduna historian, Toure Kazah-Toure (1999), argues that during this time, the dominant feature of relations between the Southern Kaduna ”pagan” groups and the emirates was slavery.
The Jema’a emirate was obligated to provide slaves, farm products, amongst other things, as tribute to Zazzau. Zazzau also had slave labour needs, had access to the trans-Saharan slave market, and was building a flourishing economy attributed to slavery. Thus, both Jema’a and Zazzau found in the Southern Kaduna non-Muslim communities legitimate target for meeting their needs for slaves (Kazah-Toure, 1999), They, therefore, periodically raided these communities, especially those they considered antagonistic, which drastically swelled hostility between non-Muslim groups and the emirates (Blench, Longtau, Hassan and Walsh, 2006;
Abdulkadir, 2011). Roger Blench (2010) argues that narratives of this slaving era, which lasted until the 1930s, have recently re-emerged to inform the current political and ethno-religious relations in Southern Kaduna, and in northern Nigeria at large. Perhaps the resilience of the slave narratives, as is suggested in my research data, comes from its being a relatively recent experience that has not been lost in time. My own initial encounters with Kaduna in the 1990s, for example, exposed me to existing historical accounts told by older people about slave raids, some of whom claimed to have had firsthand experiences of these raids and aggression or knew someone who did.
However, in their reference to this moment in history, scholars are not clear whether slavery was a unidirectional experience. Did the minorities also take slaves or were they merely victims?
Were non-Muslim Hausa-Fulani, if present, also raided? Kazah-Toure (1995) argues that while non-Muslim and non-Hausa-Fulani communities were the targets of these raids, enslavements
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and aggression, some Hausa-Fulani Muslims also suffered within the emirates. He also points out that Southern Kaduna non-Muslim groups also took slaves, but these were few and constituted captives of inter-ethnic land conflicts and counter-attacks against slave raiders (Kazah-Toure, 1999). Such Hausa-Fulani slaves were integrated into Southern Kaduna households, as the Southern Kaduna groups neither had the need for slave labour, nor an internal slave market (Kazah-Toure, 1999:115). Moreover, he argues that
In spite of prevailing internal contradictions, the polities of Southern Kaduna did not develop oppressive institutions and there was no taxation and forced labour. Major forms of domination, exploitation, oppression and repression – associated with the feudal emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate hardly existed (Kazah-Toure, 1999:116).