Northern Nigeria, just before the turn of the century: a time of unrest and civil war, when the trans-Saharan slave trade still flourished. Against this turbulent backdrop is set the story of the Hausa, a black African people who practice the Islamic religion. This great African family saga, written by the first Federal Prime Minister of Nigeria, focuses on the struggles of young Umar and his mother and describes Umar's dramatic journey across the desert with a slave caravan. Rich in adventure, it also provides a rare and vivid glimpse into the lives of women and children in a black Islamic society and their survival in a troubled age.

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, with populations in Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana. Their long history of city-states and Islamic caliphates, their complex trading economies, and their cultural traditions have attracted the attention of historians, political economists, linguists, and anthropologists. The large body of scholarship on Hausa society, however, has assumed the subordination of women to men.
"Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century" refutes the notion that Hausa women are pawns in a patriarchal Muslim society. The contributors, all of whom have done field research in Hausaland, explore the ways Hausa women have balanced the demands of Islamic expectations and Western choices as their society moved from a precolonial system through British colonial administration to inclusion in the modern Nigerian nation. This volume examines the roles of a wide variety of women, from wives and workers to political activists and mythical figures, and it emphasizes that women have been educators and spiritual leaders in Hausa society since precolonial times. From royalty to slaves and concubines, in traditional Hausa cities and in newer towns, from the urban poor to the newly educated elite, the "invisible women" whose lives are documented here demonstrate that standard accounts of Hausa society must be revised.
Scholars of Hausa and neighboring West African societies will find in this collection a wealth of new material and a model of how research on women can be integrated with general accounts of Hausa social, religious, political, and economic life. For students and scholars looking at gender and women's roles cross-culturally, this volume provides an invaluableAfrican perspective.