Jemaa

Jemaa, town, Kaduna state, central Nigeria, near the Darroro Hills and on a road from Jos to Jagindi. A 2,000-year-old terra-cotta head discovered at Jemaa in 1944 proved to be vital to an understanding of the Nok culture, a civilization that probably flourished in the area between 900 bce and 200 ce. Additional Nok sculptures were found in the 1960s at Jemaa and at Nok, the village 24 miles (39 km) northwest, where tin mining in the early 1930s led to the first Nok discoveries, which are now housed in the museum at Jos (48 miles [77 km] northeast).

The modern town originated about 1810, when Malam Usman, a Muslim preacher, assumed the leadership of Fulani herdsmen who had fled from Kajuru (75 miles [121 km] northwest) and founded the settlement of Jema’an-Darroro (“Followers of a Learned Man from Darroro”). He made Jemaa an emirate and a vassal state of the emir of Zaria. Although Usman (emir until 1833) and his son Musa (emir 1837–46 and 1849–50) enlarged the domain by conquering the Ayu, Kaje, Mora, Gwandara, Kagoro, and Kagoma peoples, Jemaa continued to pay tribute to Zaria until 1902, when it was incorporated by the British as a division of Nasarawa province. When Plateau province was created in 1926, the emirate’s headquarters was moved from Jema’an-Darroro (now known as Old Jemaa) to Jema’an-Sarari; and in 1933 Emir Muhammadu selected Kafanchan, 11 miles [18 km] north-northwest, as the emirate capital. In 1959 Jemaa emirate was joined with Kagoro, Jaba, and Moroa to form the Jemaa Federation. Although the traditional ruler belonged to a Fulani family, the majority of its inhabitants are neither Fulanis nor Muslims.

Tin mining remains an important activity, but most of Jemaa’s inhabitants are farmers, who cultivate cotton, peanuts (groundnuts), and ginger as cash crops and sorghum and millet for daily subsistence. A government dispensary serves the town. Pop. (2006) local government area, 278,735.