Hausa people

The Hausa, some 86 million people, are West Africa's great nation of the Sahel and savanna, rooted in southern Niger and northern Nigeria with communities from Agadez to Lagos, Accra and Abidjan. Their language is Afro-Asiatic's second tongue after Arabic, the market speech of half a continent. Traditionally village farmers of millet, sorghum and groundnuts, the Hausa built the walled city-states of Kano, Katsina, Zaria and Gobir, whose dyed cloth, tanned leather and kola trade ran from the Sahara to the forest. Islam, taken centuries ago, orders city life around Friday mosques and Quranic schools; the Sokoto Caliphate of 1804 made Hausaland the heart of a reforming empire. Over the last 500 years Hausa settlers, pilgrims and traders carried the language along the Hajj road and into every coastal city. Kano dye pits, Durbar horsemen and Kannywood films carry Hausa modernity on. Agadez mosques anchor the Saharan end of the Hausa world.