ideas or things with which the Hausa must have been familiar
from the very earliest time are obviously connected with Arabic or
Semitic roots. There is a certain amount of resemblance between
the Hausa language and that spoken by the Berbers to the south of
Tripoli and Tunis. This language, again, has several striking points
of resemblance with Coptic. If, as seems likely, the connexion
between these three languages should be demonstrated, such connexion
would serve to corroborate the Hausa tradition that their
ancestors came from the very far east away beyond Mecca. The
Hausa language has been reduced to writing for at least a century,
possibly very much longer. It is the only language in tropical
Africa which has been reduced to writing by the natives themselves,
unless the Vai alphabet, introduced by a native inventor in the
interior of Liberia in the first half of the 19th century be excepted;
the character used is a modified form of Arabic. Some fragments of
literature exist, consisting of political and religious poems, together
with a limited amount of native history. A volume, consisting of
history and poems reproduced in facsimile, with translations, has
been published by the Cambridge University Press.
Religion.—About one-third of the people are professed Mahommedans, one-third are heathen, and the remainder have apparently no definite form of religion. Their Mahommedanism dates from the 14th century, but became more general when the Fula sheikh Dan Fodio initiated the religious war which ended in the founding of the Fula empire. Ever since then the ruler of Sokoto has been acknowledged as the religious head of the whole country, and tribute has been paid to him as such. The Hausa who profess Mahommedanism are extremely ignorant of their own faith, and what little religious fanaticism exists is chiefly confined to the Fula. Large numbers of the Hausa start every year on the pilgrimage to Mecca, travelling sometimes across the Sahara desert and by way of Tripoli and Alexandria, sometimes by way of Wadai, Darfur, Khartum and Suakin. The journey often occupies five or six years, and is undertaken quite as much from trading as from religious motives. Mahommedanism is making very slow, if any, progress amongst the Hausa. The greatest obstacle to its general acceptance is the institution of the Ramadan fast. In a climate so hot as that of Hausaland, the obligation to abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset during one month in the year is a serious difficulty. Until the last decade of the 19th century no important attempt had been made to introduce Christianity, but the fact that the Hausa are fond of reading, and that native schools exist in all parts of the country, should greatly facilitate the work of Christian missionaries.
Bibliography.—El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny, Account of Timbuctoo and Haussa Territories (1820); Norris, Dialogues and part of the New Testament in the English, Arabic, Haussa and Bornu Languages (1853); Koelle, Polyglotta Africana (1854); Schön, Grammar of the Hausa Language (London, 1862), Hausa Reading Book (1877), and also A Dictionary of the Hausa Language (1877). Schön has also produced Hausa translations of Gen. (1858), Matt. (1857) and Luke (1858). Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa (2 vols., London, 1857); Central-afrikanische Vokabularien (Gotha, 1867); C. H. Robinson, Hausaland, or Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Soudan (1896); Specimens of Hausa Literature (1896); Hausa Grammar (1897); Hausa Dictionary (1899); P. L. Monteil, De St-Louis à Tripoli par le lac Tchad (Paris, 1895); Lt. Seymour Vandeleur, Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger (1898).
HAUSER, KASPAR, a German youth whose life was remarkable
from the circumstances of apparently inexplicable
mystery in which it was involved. He appeared on the 26th of
May 1828, in the streets of Nuremberg, dressed in the garb of a
peasant, and with such a helpless and bewildered air that he
attracted the attention of the passers-by. In his possession
was found a letter purporting to be written by a poor labourer,
stating that the boy was given into his custody on the 7th of
October 1812, and that according to agreement he had instructed
him in reading, writing, and the Christian religion, but that up
to the time fixed for relinquishing his custody he had kept him
in close confinement. Along with this letter was enclosed another
purporting to be written by the boy’s mother, stating that he
was born on the 30th of April 1812, that his name was Kaspar,
and that his father, formerly a cavalry officer in the 6th regiment
at Nuremberg, was dead. The appearance, bearing, and professions
of the youth corresponded closely with these credentials.
He showed a repugnance to all nourishment except bread and
water, was seemingly ignorant of outward objects, wrote his
name as Kaspar Hauser, and said that he wished to be a cavalry
officer like his father. For some time he was detained in prison
at Nuremberg as a vagrant, but on the 18th of July 1828 he
was delivered over by the town authorities to the care of a schoolmaster,
Professor Daumer, who undertook to be his guardian
and to take the charge of his education. Further mysteries
accumulated about Kaspar’s personality and conduct, not
altogether unconnected with the vogue in Germany, at that time,
of “animal magnetism,” “somnambulism,” and similar theories
of the occult and strange. People associated him with all sorts
of possibilities. On the 17th of October 1829 he was found to
have received a wound in the forehead, which, according to his
own statement, had been inflicted on him by a man with a
blackened face. Having on this account been removed to the
house of a magistrate and placed under close surveillance, he
was visited by Earl Stanhope, who became so interested in his
history that he sent him in 1832 to Ansbach to be educated
under a certain Dr Meyer. After this he became clerk in the
office of Paul John Anselm von Feuerbach, president of the
court of appeal, who had begun to pay attention to his case in
1828; and his strange history was almost forgotten by the
public when the interest in it was suddenly revived by his
receiving a deep wound on his left breast, on the 14th of December
1833, and dying from it three or four days afterwards. He
affirmed that the wound was inflicted by a stranger, but many
believed it to be the work of his own hand, and that he did
not intend it to be fatal, but only so severe as to give a sufficient
colouring of truth to his story. The affair created a great sensation,
and produced a long literary agitation. But the whole story
remains somewhat mysterious. Lord Stanhope eventually
became decidedly sceptical as to Kaspar’s stories, and ended by
being accused of contriving his death!
In 1830 a pamphlet was published at Berlin, entitled Kaspar Hauser nicht unwahrscheinlich ein Betrüger; but the truthfulness of his statements was defended by Daumer, who published Mitteilungen über Kaspar Hauser (Nuremberg, 1832), and Enthüllungen über Kaspar Hauser (Frankfort, 1859); as well as Kaspar Hauser, sein Wesen, seine Unschuld, &c. (Regensburg, 1873), in answer to Meyer’s (a son of Kaspar’s tutor) Authentische Mitteilungen über Kaspar Hauser (Ansbach, 1872). Feuerbach awakened considerable psychological interest in the case by his pamphlet Kaspar Hauser, Beispiel eines Verbrechens am Seelenleben (Ansbach, 1832), and Earl Stanhope also took part in the discussion by publishing Materialien zur Geschichte K. Hausers (Heidelberg, 1836). The theory of Daumer and Feuerbach and other pamphleteers (finally presented in 1892 by Miss Elizabeth E. Evans in her Story of Kaspar Hauser from Authentic Records) was that the youth was the crown prince of Baden, the legitimate son of the grand-duke Charles of Baden, and that he had been kidnapped at Karlsruhe in October 1812 by minions of the countess of Hochberg (morganatic wife of the grand-duke) in order to secure the succession to her offspring; but this theory was answered in 1875 by the publication in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung of the official record of the baptism, post-mortem examination and burial of the heir supposed to have been kidnapped. See Kaspar Hauser und sein badisches Prinzentum (Heidelberg, 1876). In 1883 the story was again revived in a Regensburg pamphlet attacking, among other people, Dr Meyer; and the sons of the latter, who was dead, brought an action for libel, under the German law, to which no defence was made; all the copies of the pamphlet were ordered to be destroyed. The evidence has been subtly analyzed by Andrew Lang in his Historical Mysteries (1904), with results unfavourable to the “romantic” version of the story. Lang’s view is that possibly Kaspar was a sort of “ambulatory automatist,” an instance of a phenomenon, known by other cases to students of psychical abnormalities, of which the characteristics are a mania for straying away and the persistence of delusions as to identity; but he inclines to regard Kaspar as simply a “humbug.” The “authentic records” purporting to confirm the kidnapping story Lang stigmatizes as “worthless and impudent rubbish.” The evidence is in any case in complete confusion.
HAUSMANN, JOHANN FRIEDRICH LUDWIG (1782–1859),
German mineralogist, was born at Hanover on the 22nd of February
1782. He was educated at Göttingen, where he obtained
the degree of Ph.D. After making a geological tour in Denmark,
Norway and Sweden in 1807, he was two years later placed at
the head of a government mining establishment in Westphalia,
and he established a school of mines at Clausthal in the Harz
mountains. In 1811 he was appointed professor of technology
and mining, and afterwards of geology and mineralogy in the
university of Göttingen, and this chair he occupied until a short
time before his death. He was also for many years secretary
of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Göttingen. He published
observations on geology and mineralogy in Spain and Italy as
well as in central and northern Europe: he wrote on gypsum,
pyrites, felspar, tachylite, cordierite and on some eruptive
