Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/82

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HAURÉAU—HAUSA
69

with great success. In 1842 Hauptmann obtained the position of cantor at the Thomas-school of Leipzig (long previously occupied by the great Johann Sebastian Bach) together with that of professor at the conservatoire, and it was in this capacity that his unique gift as a teacher developed itself and was acknowledged by a crowd of enthusiastic and more or less distinguished pupils. He died on the 3rd of January 1868, and the universal regret felt at his death at Leipzig is said to have been all but equal to that caused by the loss of his friend Medelssohn many years before. Hauptmann’s compositions are marked by symmetry and perfection of workmanship rather than by spontaneous invention.

Amongst his vocal compositions—by far the most important portion of his work—may be mentioned two masses, choral songs for mixed voices (Op. 32, 47), and numerous part songs. The results of his scientific research were embodied in his book Die Natur der Harmonik und Metrik (1853), a standard work of its kind, in which a philosophic explanation of the forms of music is attempted.


HAURÉAU, (JEAN) BARTHÉLEMY (1812–1896), French historian and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris. At the age of twenty he published a series of apologetic studies on the Montagnards. In later years he regretted the youthful enthusiasm of these papers, and endeavoured to destroy the copies. He joined the staff of the National, and was praised by Théophile Gautier as the “tribune” of romanticism. At that time he seemed to be destined to a political career, and, indeed, after the revolution of the 24th of February 1848 was elected member of the National Assembly; but close contact with revolutionary men and ideas gradually cooled his old ardour. Throughout his life he was an enemy to innovators, not only in politics and religion, but also in literature. This attitude sometimes led him to form unjust estimates, but only on very rare occasions, for his character was as just as his erudition was scrupulous. After the coup d’état he resigned his position as director of the MS. department of the Bibliothèque Nationale, to which he had been appointed in 1848, and he refused to accept any administrative post until after the fall of the empire. After having acted as director of the national printing press from 1870 to 1881, he retired, but in 1893 accepted the post of director of the Fondation Thiers. He was also a member of the council of improvement of the École des Chartes. He died on the 29th of April 1896. For over half a century he was engaged in writing on the religious, philosophical, and more particularly the literary history of the middle ages. Appointed librarian of the town of Le Mans in 1838, he was first attracted by the history of Maine, and in 1843 published the first volume of his Histoire littéraire du Maine (4 vols., 1843–1852), which he subsequently recast on a new plan (10 vols., 1870–1877). In 1845 he brought out an edition of vol. ii. of G. Ménage’s Histoire de Sablé. He then undertook the continuation of the Gallia Christiana, and produced vol. xiv. (1856) for the province of Tours, vol. xv. (1862) for the province of Besançon, and vol. xvi. (1865–1870) for the province of Vienne. This important work gained him admission to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1862). In the Notices et extraits des manuscrits he inserted several papers which were afterwards published separately, with additions and corrections, under the title Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale (6 vols., 1890–1893). To the Histoire littéraire de la France he contributed a number of studies, among which must be mentioned that relating to the sermon-writers (vol. xxvi., 1873), whose works, being often anonymous, raise many problems of attribution, and, though deficient in originality of thought and style, reflect the very spirit of the middle ages. Among his other works mention must be made of his remarkable Histoire de la philosophie scolastique (1872–1880), extending from the time of Charlemagne to the 13th century, which was expanded from a paper crowned by the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1850; Les Mélanges poétiques d’Hildebert de Lavardin (1882); an edition of the Works of Hugh of St Victor (1886); a critical study of the Latin poems attributed to St Bernard (1890); and Bernard Délicieux et l’inquisition albigeoise (1877). To these must be added his contributions to the Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques, Didot’s Biographie générale, the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, and the Journal des savants. From the time of his appointment to the Bibliothèque Nationale up to the last days of his life he was engaged in making abstracts of all the medieval Latin writings (many anonymous or of doubtful attribution) relating to philosophy, theology, grammar, canon law, and poetry, carefully noting on cards the first words of each passage. After his death this index of incipits, arranged alphabetically, was presented to the Académie des Inscriptions, and a copy was placed in the MS. department of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

See obituary notice read by Henri Wallon at a meeting of the Académie des Inscriptions on the 12th of November 1897; and the notice by Paul Meyer prefixed to vol. xxxiii. of the Histoire littéraire de la France.


HAUSA, sometimes incorrectly written Haussa, Houssa or Haoussa, a people inhabiting about half a million square miles in the western and central Sudan from the river Niger in the west to Bornu in the east. Heinrich Barth identifies them with the Atarantians of Herodotus. According to their own traditions the earliest home of the race was the divide between the Sokoto and Chad basins, and more particularly the eastern watershed, whence they spread gradually westward. In the middle ages, to which period the first authentic records refer, the Hausa, though never a conquering race, attained great political power. They were then divided into seven states known as “Hausa bokoy” (“the seven Hausa”) and named Biram, Daura, Gober, Kano, Rano, Katsena and Zegzeg, after the sons of their legendary ancestor. This confederation extended its authority over many of the neighbouring countries, and remained paramount till the Fula under Sheikh Dan Fodio in 1810 conquered the Hausa states and founded the Fula empire of Sokoto (see Fula).

The Hausa, who number upwards of 5,000,000, form the most important nation of the central Sudan. They are undoubtedly nigritic, though in places with a strong crossing of Fula and Arab blood. Morally and intellectually they are, however, far superior to the typical Negro. They are a powerful, heavily built race, with skin as black as most Negroes, but with lips not so thick nor hair so woolly. They excel in physical strength. The average Hausa will carry on his head a load of ninety or a hundred pounds without showing the slightest signs of fatigue during a long day’s march. When carrying their own goods it is by no means uncommon for them to take double this weight. They are a peaceful and industrious people, living partly in farmsteads amid their crops, partly in large trading centres such as Kano, Katsena and Yakoba (Bauchi). They are extremely intelligent and even cultured, and have exercised a civilizing effect upon their Fula conquerors to whose oppressive rule they submitted. They are excellent agriculturists, and, almost unaided by foreign influence, they have developed a variety of industries, such as the making of cloth, mats, leather and glass. In Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast territory they form the backbone of the military police, and under English leadership have again and again shown themselves to be admirable fighters and capable of a high degree of discipline and good conduct. Their food consists chiefly of guinea corn (sorghum vulgare), which is ground up and eaten as a sort of porridge mixed with large quantities of red pepper. The Hausa attribute their superiority in strength to the fact that they live on guinea corn instead of yams and bananas, which form the staple food of the tribes on the river Niger. The Hausa carried on agriculture chiefly by slave labour; they are themselves born traders, and as such are to be met with in almost every part of Africa north of the equator. Small colonies of them are to be found in towns as far distant from one another as Lagos, Tunis, Tripoli, Alexandria and Suakin.

Language.—The Hausa language has a wider range over Africa north of the equator, south of Barbary and west of the valley of the Nile, than any other tongue. It is a rich sonorous language, with a vocabulary containing perhaps 10,000 words. As an example of the richness of the vocabulary Bishop Crowther mentions that there are eight names for different parts of the day from cockcrow till after sunset. About a third of the words are connected with Arabic roots, nor are these such as the Hausa could well have borrowed in anything like recent times from the Arabs. Many words representing