Tsibbu, Magic and Hausa Medicine

How Hausa magic-medicine systems continue to exist between religion and culture. 

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, Reimagining Nigerian Heritage. Buy the issue here.

Hausa society cannot be easily characterized as socially and culturally homogeneous. While the people of Hausaland—stretching from northern Nigeria to southern Niger Republic—share a common language and some customs, they have experienced different economic and political pressures. Today, the Hausa people are majorly Muslims. Nevertheless, Tsibbu magic remains a part of life in Hausaland. It is synonymous with acts that are super-human and involves consultations with spirits or stars in the sky for help and healing. Although Sunni Muslims shun Tsibbu, finding it at odds with Islam, many people still patronize the magic system. Tsibbu practices, as such, remain rooted within the fabrics of the practice of Islam.  

Hausaland has always found itself as a commercial centre linked to the rest of the world. Kano was a major route for the trans-Saharan trade, and today Kano air routes link Hausaland to Cairo in Egypt, Beirut in Lebanon, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Lagos in Nigeria, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and London in the United Kingdom. Tsibbu found its roots within this commercial nerve as a form of medicinal trade, countering evil by intertwining with local rituals and words from the Quran. Today, you will find two kinds of Hausa people: those who believe in Hausa animism, magic and astrology, and those who consider it nonsense—un-Islamic and unscientific...

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