User:T L Miles/Kanuri people

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http://www.africanholocaust.net/peopleofafrica.htm

The household (not the family itself) is an important economic unit to the Kanuri. The greater the number in a family, the more prestige the family head is given. For this reason young men are often "loaned" to households to help with field labor, to provide support, and to help in defending the family. In return, the head of the household will clothe the young man, feed him, pay his bride price, and possibly provide a bride for him. At that time, he will leave and start his own household. This type of relationship is widespread in Kanuri society. It is similar to the father-son relationship in that supreme loyalty and respect is given to the head of the household at all times.

Like most children, the young Kanuri children often play games with each other. Even before puberty, children learn the roles they will take on when they reach maturity.Kanuri men marry while they are in their early twenties. Polygamy is common and a man may have as many as four wives. Young girls marry while they are in their teens. Ideally, a man wants his first wife to be a young virgin. However, the bride price for a virgin is quite expensive, so men often take divorced women as their first wives. The divorce rate among the Kanuri is extremely high, with eight out of ten marriages ending in divorce.

The traditional Kanuri dress consists of large robe-type garments that are worn with turbans or brightly embroidered caps. The large robes provide protection from the consistent heat. This attire is never worn while working out in the fields, but rather at festivals and Islamic ceremonies.


Prstige based upon people in your group, not territory, from house-head to sultan (like the Hausa) p.170

In Damergaram: domestic slavery, "kambe": freed persons Cohen. Slavery among the Kanuri. Trans-Action 4:48-50. 1967



Dagera (Kanuri of Damergou, made feif of Tuareg in the late 18th early 19th century, moving north into Tuareg lands. cites Baier 1973 Also moving into Damergou beacause population and climate rebounding from previous famine p. 405


Jolijn Geels p. 29 Boudouma (Lake chad fishing culture), Dagera, Manga people, Mobeur 4% of population Scarring, less common, fine parallel lines on cheek, sometimes with a single line on forehead an nose


Hutchison (personal communication, 1985) reports: "The major dialects of Kanuri spoken in Nigeria and Niger are Bilma, Dagera, Fashi, Manga, Mobar, and Yerwa. A wide range of dialects of Kanembu are spoken in Chad, and certain of the westernmost dialects, a very few of which are spoken on the former shores of Lake Chad in eastern Niger (Kuburi, Suwurti, and Tumari) are mutually intelligible with the Mobar dialect of Kanuri. The Kogono dialect of Kanembu spoken in the Kanem region north of Lake Chad is also mutually intelligible with the Mobar dialect and is the dialect that has traditionally been used to broadcast Kanembu in Chad. In Nigeria, the dialect emerging as most important is Yerwa of Maiduguri, owing to the city's historical and present day political importance. The Yerwa dialect closely resembles that spoken by the Mobar (or Mowar) dialect. Its population straddles the Nigeria-Niger border area. In Niger, more than half of the Kanuri-speaking population is for the most part Manga and partially Dagera speaking. The Manga and Dagera dialects are fully mutually intelligible, though significantly different from the Mobar and Yerwa dialects." (Webbook)




Beri-beri, Bornu, Yerwa


Kanuri family structure has been much written about by Western academics, most notably by the Anthropologist Ronald Cohen, who studied Nigerian Kanuri communities throughout the 1960s to the 1980s. Traditional Kanuri families are Patrilocal and Polygynous, where men, especially those economically successful or of higher castes, preside over large family compounds of extended family, as many as four wives and their children. Women traditionally marry young, but maintain ties to their original family. Decent is traced both patrilinally and matrilinally, and widowed or divorced women may often retire to the homes of their sons or brothers. Kanuri traditional society is notable for having a unusually high divorce rate: somewhere around %80 of marriages end in divorce, with the rate higher in polygamous unions where women may freely divorce if they come into conflict with co-wives.

Economically, women have little sway in traditional Kanuri families, and in some areas, Purduah (relgious seclusion) is common. In other areas, Kanuri women work fields alongside men and are not secluded. [1]

While agnatic relations take precedence for legal matters and inheritance, kin relations are recognized through both lines. Kin terms make no distinctions for agnates above the parental generation or for cousins, who are all classed as brothers and sisters. Agnates generally live together in their own wards within a city, town, or village. Although there are no corporate lineages as such, in the eyes of the law these groups of neighboring agnates are treated as corporate units, in the sense that they are responsible for the actions of their members. People without agnates upon whom they can depend are social outcasts.


"Social Stratification in Borno," in Social Stratification in Africa, eds., Arthur Tuden

Arthur Tuden,& Leonard Plotnicov, ed., Social stratification in Africa (New York, Free Press, 1970,


Historical dictionary of Chad By Samuel Decalo Edition: 2, illustrated Published by Scarecrow Press, 1987 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Sep 13, 2008 ISBN 0810819376


Reprint with changes. First published: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1967.

More details The Kanuri of Borno By Ronald Cohen Edition: reprint, illustrated Published by Waveland Press, 1987 ISBN 0881332437


Throughout the collection, Cohen uses African words, abbreviations, and words with variant spellings. For example, Borno is the current spelling of what was originally spelled Bornu. Cohen refers to the founder of the village or his descendant as the Village Head (VH) or the Lawan. There are wards or hamlets that are run by a Bulama, usually the head of the largest household in the area. There are several districts in Borno, each with a District Head (DH). The Shehu, or king, is a political/religious leader. A person who has studied the Koran is called a Malam. The Kanuri are a large ethnic group in Borno in northeastern Nigeria. Biu is in the southern portion of the Borno state. The peoples of Borno speak Bura-Pabir. Speakers of Bura are predominately non-Islamic, while speakers of Pabir (also known as Babur or Babir) are predominately Islamic.


Spousal Interdependence, Female Power and Divorce: A Cross-Cultural Examination Journal article by Lewellyn Hendrix, Willie Pearson Jr.; Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. 26, 1995



Ronald Cohen. Dominance and Defiance: A Study of Marital Instability in an Islamic African Society. Anthropological Studies No. 6. American Athnropological Association (1971)



Among the Kanuri in Borno, almsgiving was an essential part of many rituals. Holger Weiss [http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/kmi/Julkais/WPt/2000/wp12001.htm Zak?t in Pre-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. A Tentative Survey. Part Three. (2001) Universitiy of Helsinki

in 1971, Kanuri divorce rates in Nigeria varried by locality from 68% to 99%. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=757&dat=19710306&id=LbANAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p0QDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4482,505328 Divorce, Kanuri Style, Is So Easy Everybody Does It. Ann Lerner. The Virgin Islands Daily News - Mar 6, 1971 March 6, 1971



(Biu Division, Bura and Babur), 1972-1974 An ethnographic study of the Babur-Bura society with a special emphasis on spread of Islam and the split between the Babur (predominately Islamic) and the Bura groups in this region the Kanuri and Bura-Pabir speaking peoples



Borno State: Borno, Nguru, Geidam, Kukawa, Damaturu, Kaga, Konduga, Maiduguri, Mongumo, Fune, Gujba, Ngala, Bama, Fika, Gwoza, Kano State : Hadejia minority communities in Yobe, Jigawa and Bauchi

KANURI, YERWA (KANOURI, BERIBERI, BORNU, KANOURY) KANURI, MANGA (MANGA, KANOURI, KANOURY) DAGARA, KAGA (KAGAMA), SUGURTI, LARE (LERE), KWAYAM, NJESKO, KABARI (KUVURI), NGAZAR, GUVJA, MAO, TEMAGERI, FADAWA, MOVAR (MOBBER, MOBER, MAVAR

Nigeria: Austrian Red Cross Country Reports. ACCORD/UNHCR: 8th European Country of Origin Information Seminar. Vienna, 28-29 June 2002







Manga and Kanuri speakers in northeastern Nigeria spoke easily to one another. But in the major Kanuri city of Maiduguri, 160 kilometers south of Manga-speaking areas, Manga was considered a separate language. Kanuri and Manga who lived near each other saw themselves as members of the same ethnic group; others farther away did not.

The north was widely associated with the Hausa-speaking groups that occupied most of the region, but the Kanuri predominated in the northeast, with a belt of peoples between the two; there were also important pastoral nomadic groups (mostly Fulani) that lived throughout the same region. The other major ethnic grouping of the north is that of the Kanuri of Borno. They entered Nigeria from the central Sahara as Muslim conquerors in the fifteenth century, set up a capital, and subdued and assimilated the local Chadic speakers. By the sixteenth century, they had developed a great empire that at times included many of the Hausa states and large areas of the central Sahara. Attacked in the nineteenth century by the Fulani, they resisted successfully, although the conflict resulted in a new capital closer to Lake Chad, a new ruling dynasty, and a balance of power between the Hausa-Fulani of the more westerly areas and the Kanuri speakers of the central sub-Saharan rim. [2] Country Studies Series by Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress 1991

Even though Kanuri language, culture, and history are distinctive, other elements are similar to the Hausa. They include the general ecology of the area, Islamic law and politics, the extended households, and rural-urban distinctions. There was, however, a distinctive Kanuri tradition of a U-shaped town plan open to the west, housing the political leader or founder at the head of the plaza formed by the arms of the U. The people remained intensely proud of their ancient traditions of Islamic statehood. Among many ancient traits were included their long chronicles of kings, wars, and hegemony in the region, and their specific Kanuri cultural identity seen in the hairstyles of the women, the complex cuisine, and the identification with ruling dynasties whose names and exploits were still fresh.

Things have been changing, however. Maiduguri, the central city of Kanuri influence in the twentieth century, was chosen as the capital of an enlarged Northeast State during the civil war. Because this state encompassed large sections of Hausa-Fulani areas, many of these ethnic groups came to the capital. This sudden incorporation, together with mass communications, interstate commerce, and intensification of travel and regional contacts brought increased contacts with Hausa culture. By the 1970s, and increasingly during the 1980s and into the 1990s, Kanuri speakers found it best to get along in Hausa, certainly outside their home region and even inside Borno State. By 1990 women were adopting Hausa dress and hairstyles, and all schoolchildren learned to speak Hausa. Almost all Bornoans in the larger towns could speak Hausa, and many Hausa administrators and businesspeople were settling in Borno. Just as Hausa had incorporated its Fulani conquerors 175 years earlier, in 1990 it was spreading into Borno, assimilating as it went. Its probable eventual triumph as the universal northern language was reinforced by its utility, although the ethnically proud Kanuri would retain much of their language and culture for many years.

Even in the more cosmopolitan cities, more than 90 percent of marriages were within rather than between ethnic units, or at least within identical regions and language groups. Marriages between subgroups of Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, or Kanuri occurred without stigma and had done so for many decades.


An Economic Analysis of Polygyny: The Case of Maiduguri Amyra Grossbard Current Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Dec., 1976), pp. 701-707

Cohen (1971) himself has shown a ositive relation betrleen , divorce and polygyny. Using the method of cross-tabulation, he found that a higher percentage of polygynous than of monog- amous unions ends in divorce. Within the polygynous family, Cohen's tables show that the two-wife family increases the prob- ability of divorce of the younger wife, while the three-wife family increases the probability of divorce for the senior wife







  1. Marriage and Child-Birth among the Kanuri
  2. R. E. Ellison
  3. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1936), pp. 524-535


Udjo, Eric O. "A Determinant of Fertility and its Cultural Context Among Nigeria's Kanuri." (In) Ebigbola, Joshua A. and Akin, J. and Van de Walle, Etienne (eds.). The Cultural Roots of African Fertility Regimes: Proceedings of the Ife Conference. Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University. Department of Demography and Social Statistics. 1987. pp. 277-293.


http://www.kanuri.net/kanuri_studies2.php?aID=2

Kanuri studies so far ? social anthropology Editha Platte


  1. ^ Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, Joan Bamberger. Woman, culture, and society. Stanford University Press, (1974) ISBN 0804708517 pp. 107-108.
  2. ^ Louis R. Mortimer (ed.) Nigeria.


Botting, Douglas (1961). The Knights of Bornu. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Cohen, Ronald (1960). The Structure of Kanuri Society. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.

Cohen, Ronald (1961). "The Success that Failed: An Experiment in Culture Change in Africa." Anthropologica, n.s. 3:21-36.

Cohen, Ronald (1967). The Kanuri of Bornu. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Low, Victor N. (1972). Three Nigerian Emirates: A Study in Oral History. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.

Murdock, George P. (1959). Africa: Its People and Their Culture History. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Peshkin, Alan (1970). "Education and Modernism in Bornu." Comparative Education Review 14:283-300.

Peshkin, Alan (1972). Kanuri Schoolchildren: Education and Social Mobilization in Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Rosman, Abraham (1966). Social Structure and Acculturation among the Kanuri of Northern Nigeria. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.

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