Traces of the Arabic literary tradition in modern Hausa ajami poetry

In northern Nigeria, for over a century, Arabic-based script called ajami was used in composing poetry in Hausa, the language which dominates within the area. This tradition continued until the turn of the 20th century, when northern Nigeria witnessed the introduction of a new writing tradition, based on Latin script called boko. In the first half of the 20th century, Latin script was officially employed as the standard for writing Hausa. However, the tradition of writing in ajami script has not disappeared. This study focuses on the influence of Arabic poetic tradition on Hausa poetry written in ajami. A total number of 323 poems in a manuscript form collected from four Hausa contemporary poets are analyzed for structure, metre, rhyme, topics, and rhetorical devices.