Culture : Nigeria Puts on the Glitz to Pay Homage to Islam : Twice a year, the country erupts in medieval pageantry for the <i> durbar</i> , a peculiarly African religious rite.

Visible five abreast in the hazy distance, the horsemen kicked their steeds into motion, as if jump-starting a car. Out of a cloud of red dust they thundered, galloping past the ancient mosque of Kano and straight for the dun walls of the emir’s palace, as if trying by sheer momentum to burst through its tiny dark doorway into the labyrinthine chambers within.

But at the last moment, the horses skidded to a stop and reared high on their hind legs. Another cheer rose from the surrounding throng as the riders took their place among a thousand others, their horses all richly caparisoned in red and gold. Off in the haze, another rank of riders spurred forward, and behind them yet a thousand more waited their turn.

In Nigeria, it is the season of the durbar.

Twice a year, at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and again at the time of the annual Mecca pilgrimage, or hajj, all of northern Nigeria erupts in a transport of medieval festivity. Robes of indigo and bright red, shot through with threads of silver and gold, are hauled out of storage; stallions bred for their prowess at racing or polo are blanketed in eye-catching colors and fitted with filigreed and fringed armor.

Provincial potentates, their turbans soaked in indigo until they set in stiff, metallic-looking folds, make their way to ancient capitals to pay homage to their spiritual leaders--the emirs or the sultan. In their turn, the emirs lead new processions to the nearest seat of government, in this case the military headquarters of Kano, where they and the secular local governors bow to each others’ authority and express their willing partnership in making this proud country great.

In their colorful display of wealth--the importance of an emir is marked by the number of horsemen he brings to the pageant--their reinforcement of social hierarchies and their joint sponsorship by secular and traditional leaders, the durbars embody a peculiarly African strain of one of the world’s great religions: Islam.

Suleyman Nyang, chairman of the department of African studies at Howard University and a leading authority on West African religions, says: “The durbars are a skillful manipulation of tradition in the service of secular authority and those with residual religious authority.”

More than that, their ostentatious, antique display harks back to the roots of African Islam, when Arab traders first penetrated the savannah in the 11th Century. The Arab caravans offered not only exotic goods but “symbols of progress and civilization, which had a great appeal” to the African elite, says Francis Deng, a specialist in African culture at the Brookings Institution. The symbols were associated with Muslim modes of observance, and over time they were appropriated by a new African commercial class.

The durbar’s expression of secular and religious partnership reflects another milestone in Islam’s African history, the coming of British colonialism. Beginning around 1903, the British used the Muslim potentates of northern Nigeria to execute their administrative will, a system known as “indirect rule.” This reinforced the stature of the emirs and sultan of the region, even while binding them to the colonial rulers.

But, overall, the durbars are symbolic of Islam’s enduring grip on this region.

Africa is the only continent in the world in which Muslims are in an absolute majority. Islam dominates north Africa, and in Nigeria, Senegal, the Sahelian countries of Mali, Niger and Chad and the coastal regions of Kenya and Tanzania, it has provided hundreds of millions of Africans with their only sense of stable community in an era of military dictatorships, coups d’etat , economic decline and family collapse.

Of course, Islam has also been a polarizing force, as in Sudan, where the policies of a fundamentalist Islamic government have exacerbated a geographical and ethnic division between the country’s northern Arabs and its southern African Christians and animists, leading to war and famine.

But most African countries with large Muslim populations have attempted to strike a better balance between secular and religious authority.

Nowhere is that need more evident than in Nigeria, where Islam and Christianity both claim about 40% of the population, with the remainder classified as animist.

Nigeria’s history of political chaos--in 31 years of independence there have been seven military coups and only nine years of civilian rule--has allowed the emirs’ religious authority and heritage of traditional leadership to create a powerful anchor for people’s lives. In probably no other secular state do religious elders have so much quasi-official influence.

“Some traditional authorities in Nigeria have become symbols of survival,” says Claude Ake, a Nigerian political scientist of worldwide reknown. “This is what happens when the state is not really able to establish itself or inspire loyalty.”

Obviously not all Nigerians are comfortable with the emirs’ influence. Christians from the country’s southern coastal belt mistrust the Islamic tradition of melding secular and religious concerns. “Southerners see keeping religion out of politics as a sensible thing,” says Ake. “But to Muslims, keeping religion out of politics is nonsense. This is one of the problems of communication between the two sides.”

Muslim-Christian tension has tremendous physical and political ramifications in Nigeria--as was clear recently in one northern state during an outbreak of anti-Christian riots evidently sparked by rumors that a local pastor had denigrated the Koran during a Sunday sermon. The riots lasted for most of a week, and as many as 800 people were killed.

Still, some leading Nigerian Muslims have been the objects of nationwide reverence and have even become political heroes. All but one of Nigeria’s post-independence heads of state, in fact, have been Muslims from the north.

Reflecting that political influence, today’s military government does little to overtly undermine the emirs’ sense of their own importance. The government allows them to parcel out to their followers the coveted Saudi Arabian visas needed for the annual hajj to Mecca (after which journey a traveler can place the important, honorific “Alhaji” before his name). This year at durbar time the military government presented selected emirs with those time-honored symbols of African largess: fleets of Mercedes-Benz limousines.

More important, President Ibrahim Babangida, himself a Muslim, last year took the politically delicate step of upgrading Nigeria’s position in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the worldwide summit of Muslim-oriented governments, from observer status to full membership. Most observers in the country believe the government was responding to clear pressure from the council of emirs.

For one thing, the government probably needs the emirs’ support for its plan to turn over rule to a democratically elected civilian government in 1992--a huge undertaking in this disorganized country.

“We try to encourage people to accept these (political) changes,” acknowledges Alhaji Ado Bayero, the emir of Kano. “We encourage them to come out and vote. You would find that if the traditional leaders did not send these messages, thousands would not turn out.”

As he grants an interview to discuss the nature of his modern temporal authority, the emir is surrounded by reminders of the feudalism of the region’s traditional heritage. Every room of his vast stone-and-mud palace in the heart of Kano’s walled Old City is occupied by a squad of idle retainers, some dressed in flowing gowns of red and green signifying some special role in the hierarchy. Most of them barely stir from a languid crouch on the floor except when the emir is on the move within the serpentine corridors, or when he enters or leaves the palace.

Then the place erupts: A dozen trumpeters sound their eight-foot horns, the pounding of drums echoes off every wall and an ancient praise-singer proclaims the emir’s presence in a strident, warbling chant. Like most leaders of his rank, this emir travels in a ceaseless blare of noise, the way olden kings might move in a cloud of incense. When the emir settles in his quarters, the sound and motion gradually wane, like a clock running down.

Much of the emirs’ influence is based on a quasi-Muslim but partially African concept known as baraka , by which common people believe that a particularly blessed family--the emir’s line, say--is able to intercede for them with God.

But the special influence of Islam in Nigeria today is probably attributable more to something that happened only this century: the consolidation of British colonial rule.

The British considered the emirs they found in the north born administrators. These descendants of a nomadic tribe known as the Fulani had a “genius for rule . . . provided that their power for evil were held in check,” wrote one early colonial administrator. So they allowed the emirs to run the territory with the advice and consent of a local British resident. The pagan and animist kings of southern Nigeria were never granted the same stature, so the emirs became the pre-eminent traditional leaders in all of what later became British Nigeria, including the south.

The emirs’ stature in the Muslim world gives them unrivaled connections to the oil countries of the Middle East--and provides a vital network within Nigeria as well.

Their most devout followers are beneficiaries of this system--more so because so much of the Nigerian economy runs on personal connections and graft.

“The traditional leaders get support from all the important people in the country,” said Isiaku Raviu, the patriarch of a conglomerate of Kano-based businesses that grossed $1 billion last year. “The leaders are in a position to assist us to arrange business with local concerns and with banks, and establish relationships outside the country, too. We work as a team.”

For all that, many believe the emirs’ power is being steadily eroded as their domains become increasingly Westernized. It may be true that a word over the radio or television from a local emir or the sultan of Sokoto, the senior Islamic official in the country, can quell a local disturbance or forestall a religious riot.

But many Nigerian observers think that much of the emirs’ claim to a tight grip on the sentiment of the public is self-serving. “They exaggerate if they say the state is incapable of holding elections without their help,” says Howard University’s Nyang. “They’re needed, but they’re not indispensable.”

Despite their ability to extract political or social concessions from the government in power, Nyang contends, they well know the limits of their authority in secular matters, as subtle as the demarcation line may be. For the emirs to overtly contradict an important government policy would be unthinkable.

“I compare them to a dog on a leash,” Nyang says. “The dog has freedom of movement, but he can only reach out to the end of the leash.”

The traditional hierarchy faces an even more dangerous enemy in Islamic fundamentalism, which periodically makes an appearance in the emirs’ back yard.

One such outbreak in Katsina overshadowed the durbar this year, for in the previous week the followers of a fundamentalist preacher had gone on a rampage in town, smashing and burning buildings, like a police station, identified with the secular state.

“Because we have so many illiterate young people who do not know the root of their own religion, they can be misled,” the emir of Katsina said in an interview, shortly after the fundamentalist riots. “The crisis is not religious but a pretext.”

Outside his palace, the durbar was still going on. Fronting the huge square in central Katsina dominated by the emir’s palace were headquarters of the provincial institutions it was once the emir’s birthright to administer as a benevolent despot: The police station stood opposite the palace, two courthouses on either flank. The British and the post-independence governments of Nigeria removed these institutions from religious control, but the durbar pageantry continues, evoking memories of an earlier world. While it was continuing it was almost understandable that the emir could believe, in his cool, quiet chamber deep within the palace, his own proud words: “Nigeria will never be ruled without us, the traditional rulers.”