Prof. Murray Last’s romance with Nigeria
By Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Ibraheem Hamza Muhammad
Murray Last was in his 20s when he first arrived Sokoto, the capital of the Dan Fodio Caliphate, which in itself was undergoing great changes. Nigeria had just gained its independence from Murray’s native Britain.
Just when many British colonial officers were leaving to go back to the shrinking Empire, Murray travelled the other way to sate his curiosity and expand his world view. He had come to study the ancient manuscripts in the caliphate and he was determined to do it, even if it meant learning a new language and the ajami, the system of writing Hausa in Arabic numerals. In his quest, young Murray became the first person to earn a Ph.D from a Nigerian university.
Having done his M.A in Chinese and African history at Yale, Murray contemplated going to Hong Kong to further his studies in Chinese but was eventually swayed by the excitement in newly independent African countries.
And having travelled to Jordan, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, Murray had developed an interest in “Islamic things” so it was easy for him to choose an area of interest when he arrived what was then University College Ibadan for his PhD.
“Abdullahi Smith, as the late H.S.C. Smith later became, suggested that I study the viziers, the Waziris, in Sokoto since there were documentations of the letters from the Waziri to various Emirs, and also letters from the Emirs to the Waziris, so it seemed a very good subject to do. I started in 1961 to do “A Study of Sokoto in the 19th Century, with Special Reference to the Waziris,” he had said in an earlier interview he granted to Ibrahim Sheme.
“I first came to Kano in December 1961 and then spent the Christmas in Maiduguri so, I didn’t actually go to Sokoto until Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hajj came up with me to Sokoto, after I had done my first year in Ibadan. I spent the summer in Kaduna, reading in the Archives, staying with Adamu Ciroma and Dahiru Modibbo Girei. Sometimes I played scabbles with Gomwalk and people like Garba Ja Abdulkadir and the Sarkin Jalingo - the Sarkin Muri as he became. So I got my real taste initially in Kaduna and then moved on to Sokoto to settle in the Waziri’s house,” he said in that interview.
In Sokoto, Murray found the vizier, Waziri Junaidu a very kind and learned man who gave him a place to stay and access to manuscripts. Murray had already started studying Arabic then so he would sit and read these manuscripts with his dictionary and a lantern. His relationship with Waziri Junaid had transversed generations and Murray’s children have also learnt some Hausa from Prof. Sambo Junaid, the late vizier’s son.
And it was there also that Murray’s proficiency in the Hausa language grew.
“In Sokoto, the dominant language by the 1840 to 1850 was actually Hausa. The reason is quite straight forward. There was something like 30 slaves to every free person the Fulani aristocrat. And the language of the slaves was Hausa, so the few select elites continue to speak fulfulde (Fulani), while Hausa became the dominant language since,” Last told Sunday Trust’s Ibraheem Hamza Muhammad in Kaduna recently.
He is now an Emeretus Professor of the University College, London and has returned to Nigeria every year in the last 55 years. This time, he was at the Kaduna State University to present a paper on “The Hausa people, language and history: Past, present and future”.
“For the past we need people to do serious work and not just political rhetoric and not just sitting on their chairs, but they should go out. As for the present we need archeologist, field work. While for the future I think Hausa is a relative language to speak and it will continue to spread,” he said.
Learning Hausa was only a means to an end. He needed access to a whole body of knowledge and Hausa was the key.
“I spent my time in Sokoto and then in Kano and in Gidan Jatau in Musawa Local Government. As the people do not speak English, I had to speak Hausa always,” he said.
In Sokoto, he feasted on these manuscripts and on local delicacies like fura, da nono.
“I take this in Sardauna’s House,” he said. “No matter what, Sardauna never let us have very much.” He laughed.
In the quest to expand his knowledge, Murray also expanded his culinary experience as well.
“To be honest, I eat anything. I had once eaten a Snake in Nupe land,” he told our reporter.
But over the years, he has grown to become an authority in the history of the Sokoto caliphate before venturing into Medical Anthropology, studying the Maguzawa of the north.
Some of his most interesting findings regards his statement that the Hausa man chooses and when and where to die, a statement that generated some heat. Murray explained this to Sheme.
“Basically, it came out of a work, because I did a survey of a single cemetery in Kano - Dandolo, by Goron Dutse. And the grave digger kept a record for a year of all the burials he did every day. Possibly, the statistics was not perfect but it did suggest that more people died on Friday than on any other day of the week. This came about because one of my old friends at B.U.K., John Levers, who died in Kano and was buried as a Muslim in Dandolo, I used to sometimes go to his grave. And so as happens with a talkative, I talked to the grave digger and by chance asked him, ‘How many graves do you dig every day?’ And his answer was, ‘Ten graves every day but fifteen on Fridays!’ And my jaw dropped. I knew that this was very unusual. And I know that Allah gives a blessing if you die on Friday.
“What the statistics actually show is that it’s women and children who die on Fridays more than men do and the argument is: why should that be? But I think it’s the case if you look at it worldwide, that there comes a time when you are close to death that you can decide when to die. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence, both in Nigeria and worldwide, that someone will wait until their children have come and then as soon as they come, they switch off, if you like. So it’s quite interesting. But then the biological problem is, how is it possible to do that? Because if your mind switches off, you go into a coma and the body works automatically. So, biologically and physiologically it’s a real problem which I have no answer to nor do any of my biomedical friends have. But anecdotically one of the striking things is that very often the person dying sends the people around him away, and as soon as they’re gone out of the room or shortly after, he dies. And that happens so commonly both here and elsewhere.”