ABSTRACT
Hausa poetry is a literary genre with a tradition dating back primarily to the writers of the Jihad period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, taking their inspiration from their leader, the writer and poet, Uthraan dan Fodio, whose own verse was mainly in Fula, The writers of that period inscribed in verse the moral and behavioural canons of Islam for the edification and improvement of the peoples who fell under the sway of the Fulani emirates. This didacticism was a major feature in a whole thematic range that included many of the traditional categories of Islamic verse, madaku ‘praise of the Prophet’, tauhidi ‘theology’, fikihu ‘aspects of the law’, sira ‘biography’, etc. 2
