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al-Hajj ʿUmar ibn Abi Bakr of Kete-Krachi

الحاج عمر بن أبي بكر الكنوي (عمر كيتي-كراتشي)

Notable figure d. 1353 AH / 1934 CE · Source: John Hanson and Muhammad al-Munir Gibrill, Discourses of Muslim Scholars in Colonial Ghana – catalogue of 13 Arabic poems by al-Hajj ʿUmar Krachi (genre and date for each), African Online Digital Library (Michigan State University / MATRIX, NEH). · Second source: John Hanson and Muhammad al-Munir Gibrill, “Biography of al-Hajj ʿUmar”, same site (birth at Kano, life at Salaga and Kete-Krachi, death in 1934).

Affiliation

Arabic poet of elegy, praise, history and counsel

Biography

Born in Kano in northern Nigeria in the mid-nineteenth century, he lived at Salaga and then settled at Kete-Krachi in present-day Ghana, where he remained until his death. He wrote Arabic poems in the classical qasida mould – elegies, praise poems, historical and didactic pieces – among them an elegy on Muhammad b. ʿUthman (1895), three poems on colonial rule (1899–1907), a poem on a 'Muslim revival' at Kete (1322 AH/1904), a poem on the Tunkuyau epidemic (1921) and a didactic poem on peaceful coexistence (1932).