Heidi J. Nast
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254435
- eISBN:
- 9780520941519
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254435.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History
This chapterk presents preliminary historical geographic evidence from three sites discovered in and near the ancient city-state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, that shows that as early as the 1500s, ...
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This chapterk presents preliminary historical geographic evidence from three sites discovered in and near the ancient city-state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, that shows that as early as the 1500s, royal concubines in the Kano palace held exclusive rights over the production of indigo-dyed cloth; and that they did so because of indigo blue's association with human and earthly fertility over which royalty was understood to have control. The data suggest that over subsequent centuries, royal women and non-royal women across Hausaland (a linguistic region straddling Nigeria and Niger of which Kano was a leading economic and cultural part) began producing indigo-dyed cloth for domestic and commercial purposes. It was only after a reformist jihad in the 1800s that men effectively wrested industry control away from royal and non-royal women alike. The findings indicate that while the gendered makeup of Kano's nineteenth-century indigo dyeing industry was indeed anomalous in West Africa, it was so for only a relatively brief period of time.Less
This chapterk presents preliminary historical geographic evidence from three sites discovered in and near the ancient city-state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, that shows that as early as the 1500s, royal concubines in the Kano palace held exclusive rights over the production of indigo-dyed cloth; and that they did so because of indigo blue's association with human and earthly fertility over which royalty was understood to have control. The data suggest that over subsequent centuries, royal women and non-royal women across Hausaland (a linguistic region straddling Nigeria and Niger of which Kano was a leading economic and cultural part) began producing indigo-dyed cloth for domestic and commercial purposes. It was only after a reformist jihad in the 1800s that men effectively wrested industry control away from royal and non-royal women alike. The findings indicate that while the gendered makeup of Kano's nineteenth-century indigo dyeing industry was indeed anomalous in West Africa, it was so for only a relatively brief period of time.
