Reinterpreting Adire Cloth in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

In the 1930s, the demand for adire cloth led to its subsequent production in northern Nigeria. Yoruba adire cloths were reinterpreted by Hausa adire makers who developed their own attractive, named patterns. When the Nigerian economy improved and industrially-printed cotton textiles became more accessible in the 1970s, Hausa women largely abandoned adire cloths for manufactured cotton prints. However, tourist demand for adire cloths and changing fashion tastes for newer adire styles have supported their continued creation, particularly in Kano. While political and economic circumstances have reduced adire production, these textiles continue to have sociocultural significance in twenty-first-century northern Nigeria.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to many people in Zaria City, Kaduna, and Kano, Nigeria. I would like to thank Zaineb Abdulkadir, Sadiya Ahamed, Abdulkarim DanAsabe, Hajiya Habiba, Hannatu Hassan, Umaru Idris, Samaila Nabara, Isyaku Shittu, Ya’u Tanimu and Hassana Yusuf for their kind assistance. The exceptional help of librarians at the University of Michigan, at the Herskovits Library, Northwestern University, at Ahmadu Bello University and at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University; museum curators at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester; archivists at Arewa House, at the Nigerian National Archives, and at the Kaduna State Ministry of Information, all in Kaduna, have greatly facilitated this study. Funds for this study were generously provided by the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan, the Pasold Research Fund and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

References

Notes

1 G. P. Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary and English-Hausa Vocabulary, compiled for G. P. Bargery, with some notes on the Hausa people and their language by D. Westermann, and supplement by A. N. Skinner (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello Press, 1993 [rpt 1934]).

2 A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 254.

3 C. Keyes, ‘Adire: Cloth, Gender, and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria, 1841–1991’ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993), p. 153. She documents a similar dynamic in south-western Nigeria: ‘From its inception, adire entered the market at the bottom end. The cheapest grades of factory cloth were used for it, and the finished adire was competitively priced with the products of Manchester’.

4 P. Shea, ‘The Development of an Export-Oriented Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano Emirate in the Nineteenth Century’ (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975), p. 248.

5 J. Eicher, Nigerian Handcrafted Textiles (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1976), p. 71; J. Picton and J. Mack, African Textiles (London: British Museum, 1979), p. 146; Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’, p. 249.

6 C. Polakoff, ‘The Art of Tie and Dye in Africa’, African Arts, 4, no. 3 (1971), p. 28; R. Boser-Sarivaxévanis, Aperçus sur la teinture à l’indigo en Afrique Occidentale, Band 80/I (Basel, 1969), p. 180. See also the Church Missionary Society (CMS), The Dictionary of the Yoruba Language (Lagos, 1913), for the word rẹ, to dye, steep in water, tinge, soak (p. 199) and the word dí, to tie (p. 65). The word adire is defined as ‘cloth tied in patterns by the Yorubas’ (p. 6). A later definition of adire provided by R. C. Abraham, Dictionary of Modern Yoruba (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1946), p. 14, expands its provenance: ‘type of cloth dyed by women in patterns’.

7 B. Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, Neue Folge 26 (Berlin: Verofferntlichungen des Museums, 1972), vol. 2, pp. 231a, b, 233; N. Stanfield, ‘Dyeing Methods in Western Nigeria’, in Adirẹ Cloth in Nigeria: The Preparation and Dyeing of Indigo Patterned Cloths among the Yoruba, ed. J. Barbour and D. Simmonds (Ibadan: Institute of African Studies, 1971), pp. 7–24.

8 Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, vol. 1, p. 972; vol. 2, p. 252a.

9 J. Byfield, The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Dyers in Abeokuta (Nigeria), 1890–1940 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), p. 90. She notes that these metal stencils were introduced in 1910 and were initially made with metal used to line tea chests.

10 Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, vol. 2, pp. 258–61; Picton and Mack, African Textiles, pp. 157–58.

11 J. Barbour, ‘Nigerian Adire Cloths’, Baessler-Archiv, Neue Folge, Band XVIII (1970), pp. 363–426; J. Barbour and D. Simmonds, eds, Adire Cloth in Nigeria (Ibadan: Institute of African Studies, 1971); Byfield, The Bluest Hands; Keyes, ‘Adire’; J. Perani and N. Wolff, Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa (Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 176–77; J. Picton, ‘Technology, Tradition and Lurex: The Art of Textiles in Africa’, in The Art of African Textiles, ed. J. Picton (London: Lund Humphries, 1995), pp. 15–17; Stanfield, ‘Dyeing Methods in Western Nigeria’; S. Wenger and U. Beier, ‘Adire — Yoruba Pattern Dyeing’, Nigeria Magazine, 54 (1957), pp. 208–25.

12 According to Byfield, ‘It is probable that Hausa migrants [trading in kola nuts] purchased adire cloth and helped to establish a market for it in northern Nigeria … Little work has been done on the adire trade to northern Nigeria, but Shea suggests that it was very popular by the midcolonial period’: Byfield, The Bluest Hands, p. 111. Wenger and Beier also noted the market for adire textiles in northern Nigeria: Wenger and Beier, ‘Adire — Yoruba Pattern Dyeing,’ p. 212. While Shea discusses the development of adire manufacture in Kano City, he does not go into detail about the ways that adire cloths reached the north: Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’.

13 Picton and Mack, African Textiles, p. 147.

14 In the original French, Boser-Sarivaxévanis writes ‘Aucun auteur ne fait mention de tissus teints à dessin réservé’ (p. 177). She attributes this preference of Hausa craftsmen to produce indigo piece-dyed or shiny blue-black textiles to ‘gout, de temperament, de religion’ (‘taste, temperament, and religion’) (p. 178). However, while Hausa Muslim consumers might not want to have purchased adire cloths with patterns depicting human beings, they would not have been averse to cloths with abstract geometric patterns. Boser-Sarivaxévanis, Aperçus sur la teinture à l’indigo, pp. 177–78.

15 K. C. Murray, ‘Tiv Pattern Dyeing’, Nigeria Magazine, 32 (1949), p. 41. D. Heathcote made a similar assessment: ‘The term adire, in the expression adiren ɗa (which refers to a type of design formerly used in Zaria on indigo-dyed cloths) is an instance of borrowing from the Yoruba’: D. Heathcote, ‘The Embroidery of Hausa Dress’ (PhD diss., Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, 1979), p. 19.

16 Z. Abdulkadir (older woman, Zaria City resident), interviewed by the author, 13 May 2018.

17 E. M. Bovill, ‘Jega Market’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 22, no. 85 (1922), pp. 50–60.

18 A. DanAsabe, ‘Biography of Select Kano Merchants, 1853–1955’, FAIS: Journal of Humanities, 1, no. 2 (2000), p. 55.

19 M. Johnson, ‘Calico Caravans: The Tripoli-Kano Trade After 1880’, Journal of African History, 17 (1976), p. 100.

20 H. Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857), vol. 2, p. 517.

21 F. Pedler, The Lion and the Unicorn in Africa: A History of the Origins of the United Africa Company 1787–1931 (London: Heinemann Educational, 1974).

22 A. O’Hear, ‘The Economic History of Ilorin in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: The Rise and Decline of a Middleman Society’ (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1983), p. 140.

23 See J. Onyemelukwe, ‘Some Factors in the Growth of West African Market Towns: The Example of Pre-Civil War Onitsha, Nigeria’, Urban Studies, 11 (1974), pp. 54–55, for a discussion of Igbo trade networks between the Niger River commercial centre of Onitsha and Kano in northern Nigeria. While Onyemelukwe focuses on food commodities, it is likely that Igbo traders travelling north by road brought ‘yar Onitsha (literally, daughter of Onitsha), imported English and Dutch cloth that had been sold to them when European vessels stopped at Onitsha.

24 A. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

25 Byfield, The Bluest Hands, p. 111.

26 M. Bashir (older man, Yoruba trader, Zaria City), interviewed by author, 3 June 2011.

27 R. Olaniyi, Diaspora is Not Like Home: A Social and Economic History of Yoruba in Kano, 1912–1999 (Germany: Lincom Europa, 2008).

28 A. Shittu (older man, Yoruba trader, Zaria City), interviewed by author, 4 June 2011.

29 See Keyes, ‘Adire’; Picton and Mack, African Textiles.

30 R. Shittu (older woman, Yoruba adire maker, Zaria City), interviewed by author, 20 May 2018.

31 While later replaced by laso-cement dyepits, a photograph taken by Stanhope White in the 1940s depicts what appear to be large pots, enclosed with laso-cement reinforcement. Shea described such large clay pots that were sunk in the ground that had been used for indigo dyeing: ‘They were approximately a yard in diameter at the mouth and approximately five or more feet in depth’: Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’, p. 155.

32 R. Shittu, interview, 20 May 2018. She had metal stencils made by Zaria City blacksmiths (makera) working in a place just past Zaria City market.

33 Ibid., interview. She remembers one large circular pattern, adire alakeke (referring to a large wheel, such as a bicycle wheel) that was made and sold in Zaria.

34 Lamidi (older woman, Zaria City), interviewed by the author, 16 November 2017.

35 Maryam (older woman, Zaria City), interviewed by author, 10 November 2017.

36 Lamidi, interview, 16 November 2017.

37 Ibid.

38 Abdulkadir, interview, 26 November 2017.

39 Abdulkadir, interview, 16 November 2017.

40 Abdulkadir, interview, 26 November 2017.

41 Lamidi, interview, 16 November 2017. She said that they associated a particular atamfa cloth with a peacock (ɗawisu) pattern with the manufacturer’s label, which also had a picture of a peacock on it.

42 Abdulkabir, interview, 26 November 2017.

43 Some of the other patterns named include mai razor; a circular pattern called hajara; the pattern called jaki ya sha wuta (which resembles the vaccination mark seen on a donkey); and mai asabari (asabari — large mat screen made of reeds; Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary, p. 38). A more recent type of adire cloth called adire kaman kampala will be discussed later in this article.

44 Faskare is defined as ‘a kind of weaving, the warp being of black and white threads, and the woof white’: Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary, p. 311.

45 U. Idris (older man, adire dyer, resident of Zaria City) interviewed by the author, 29 April 2018.

46 Idris, interview, 26 April 2018.

47 Idris, interview, 27 April 2018.

48 According to Keyes, ‘In the 1940’s … Manchester honed its skills in producing and marketing imitation adire … In any case, adire would remain locked in battle with its industrially produced counterparts for the next two decades’: Keyes, ‘Adire’, p. 95.

49 Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’, p. 133.

50 J. Hogendorn, ‘The Cotton Campaign in Northern Nigeria, 1902–1914’, in Cotton, Colonialism, and Social Histories in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. A. Isaacman and R. Roberts (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), pp. 50–70.

51 Keyes, ‘Adire’, p. 131 n. 67.

52 Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’, pp. 248–49. The mass production of adire cloth in Kano was still being carried out when Philip Shea conducted research in 1970–1972 for his 1975 dissertation on the history of indigo dyeing in Kano.

53 Shea, ‘Dyed Cloth Industry in Kano’, p. 248.

54 The adire cloth pattern, jaki ya sha wuta, was done with sewing machines rather than by hand in Kano. According to Hajiya Safiya: ‘That was the only style they did with machines. The other patterns they only did by tying by hand’: S. Ahamed [older woman, ties adire cloth, Kano], interviewed by the author, 17 May 2018. Her son added that someone at Karofi Kofar Mata dyeing centre was using a sewing machine to make adire patterns: ‘But he has government work and only comes after work. He has a sewing machine and keeps it in a shop nearby, which he brings to Kofar Mata’: B. Sa’adu (man, indigo dyer, Kano), interviewed by the author, 17 May 2018.

55 B. Sa’adu, interview, 17 May 2018. He said that some Yoruba women brought adire cloth to the Karofi Kofar Mata dyepits for indigo dyeing.

56 Ibid.

57 S. Ahamed, interview, 2 May 2018.

58 S. Ahamed, interview, 17 May 2018.

59 The Karofi Kofar Mata dyepits are said to have been established in 1498.

60 D. Abdullahi (man, Head, Department of Kano State Tourist Promotion, Kano), interviewed by the author, 16 May 2018.

61 Barbour notes another source of demand for traditional adire cloth: ‘In the early 1960s the intelligentsia began to appreciate native crafts and a group of avant garde young men, both Nigerian and expatriate began to wear shirts of adire … This fashion became popular and by 1964 every young man had his adire shirt, usually in a folded pattern’: Barbour, ‘Nigerian Adire Cloths’, p. 365.

62 I. Mudashir, ‘After 500 Years, Kano Dyeing Business is Dying’, Weekly Trust, 20 June 2015, http://www.weeklytrust.com.ng (accessed 21 June 2015).

63 A. Uba (older man, indigo dyer, Kano), interviewed by author, 17 May 2018.

64 T. Benson, ‘Reactivation of Kano Traditional Dye Pits for Sustainable Development’ (MA thesis, Ahmadu Bello University, 2007).

65 Keyes, ‘Adire’, p. 95; see also Picton, Art of African Textiles, p. 17.

66 Keyes, ‘Adire’, p. 107.

67 While formerly sold in Zaria City market, adire kaman kampala cloths were no longer available there in 2018 according to Isyaku Shittu (man, textile trader, Zaria), interviewed by the author, 4 May 2018.

68 Sa’adatu, interview.

69 Wenger and Beier, ‘Yoruba Pattern Dyeing’, p. 212.

70 One trader at the Cultural Center (Accra) said that traders sometimes bring tie-and-dye (adire) cloths from Kumasi, Ghana, for sale.

71 Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, vol. 2, pls 250, 251 and 252b.

72 Ibid., pl. 250.

73 Ibid., pls 251 and 252b.

74 J. Eades, ‘Kinship and Entrepreneurship Among Yoruba in Northern Ghana’, in Strangers in African Societies, ed. W. Shack and E. Skinner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 174. Eades interviewed Joseph Ade, who ‘… made his first journey there [to Ghana] in 1912 and spent 10 years trading in Accra, selling adire cloth. He returned to Ogbomosho to marry in 1922, and after three more years in Kumasi, went on to Tamale in 1925’.

75 Safiya, interview, 13 May 2018.

76 Girki is defined by Bargery: ‘2. (a) a cloth with alternate widths of different patterns or colour, each width containing several strips of its colour’: Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary, p. 390. While this definition refers to a hand-woven cloth made with narrow strips, it may also allude to bands of variegated colours in an adire cloth.

77 H. Usman (older woman, tied adire cloth, Zaria City) interview by author, 28 April 2018. Bargery defines barankaci as ‘a plant with a beanlike pod which is used as a rattle’: Bargery, A Hausa-English Dictionary, p. 82.

78 Abdulkadir, interview, 13 May 2018.

79 Ibid.

80 Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, vol. 2, pls 251 and 252b.

81 It is unlikely that adire cloths are currently being dyed in Anka as most of the dyepits from the 1960s have been abandoned. Furthermore, Zamfara State has been plagued by kidnapping and robbery. In April 2018, twenty-six people were killed by unknown gunmen; the bodies were buried in Anka. B. Adebayo, ‘Gunmen Kill 26 in Nigeria’s Zamfara State’, CNN (13 April 2018), https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/africa/nigerias-zamfara-killings-intl/index.html (accessed 17 August 2018).

82 Picton, The Art of African Textiles, pp. 25–26.

83 Cohen, Custom and Politics.

84 The proximity of Niger State and its Nupe population to Yoruba areas to the immediate south has led to numerous interconnections with Yoruba craftswomen with respect to weaving and dyeing. S. F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria (London: International African Institute, 1942), pp. 295–97.

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Elisha P. Renne

Elisha P. Renne is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) and in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the editor of Veiling in Africa (2013), co-editor of Yoruba Religious Textiles (2005) and the author of Cloth That Does Not Die (1995) and Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria (2018).