Still in Search of Arud Meters in KANURI

Since I started writing formal poetry, my interest in the arud of the Arabs has been ever-increasing. It's been discovered by the late Professor Kabir Galadanci in the composition of the 19th Century scholars, mainly the Shehu and his students as well as in many Hausa compositions that followed their paths, started first by his two children, Nana Asma'u and Isan Kware, his youngest son.

My expectation is that the centuries long predecessors of the Fulani in spreading Islam in Nigeria - the Kanuri - must have also adopted the arud meters, perhaps earlier than the Fulani, and especially considering the direct link which the civilisation they built in the Chad Basin had with Arab kingdoms like the Fatimid Egypt in the distant past. Since I do not know, I came out searching for such poems. I can even go to Maiduguri to get copies if available.

The response to my search among my friends on Facebook isn't met with success so far, though I must quickly add that I am still very hopeful. The Kanuris cannot be an exemption to the general rule of adopting the arud meters by virtually all the major languages which came into contact with the Arabs in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia.

This was the quest in my mind when I wrote my first post on the matter before Falmata Alaye reincarnated and took over the discussion. Can our renowned Kanuri intellectuals like my friends and teachers, Professors Tijjani El-Miskin, Khalifa Dikwa Phd, Goni Mohammed and others come to my aid? Afterall, what the Fulbe can do, the Kanuri can do.... (Did you say better? That's debatable anyway. If the Kanuri want me to be on their side of the debate, they know what to give me.)

The discovery of the arud meters in Kanuri will open a new vista in the study of indigenous poetry in Nigeria. So far, the gateway into Hausaland of such type of poetry is assumed, on the strength of available documents, to be through the Fulani scholars. My theory is that another one, which might have likey preceded it, may be lying in the archives of, arguably, the most lasting empire of Western Sudan.

If such meters have already been discovered in Kanuri, how many of the 16 were found and what influence did they have on the compositions of scholars of the other tribes under the old Borno Empire like the Mandara, Hausa and even the Fulani in the Gongola basin long before the debut of Danfodio Jihad?

We will come to the pre-Jihad Yoruba and Nupe scholarship later. Theirs will be more intriguing because the Nubians (Nupe) are closer to Arabs than the Kanuris, though the former might have migrated into central Nigeria before the advent of Islam.

I am ever willing to be educated on this matter please.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

Postscript:

Just finished speaking to a renowned prosodist, Professor Balarabe Zulyadayn of Unimaid, who confirmed to me that there are indeed Kanuri poems written with Arab meters. He promised to send aome to me. As I said, there was another gateway ke nan. Alhamdulillah.