Allo Kafii Gida: Five Continents Editions

Those who made the decorations embellishing these Qur'anic tablets were not simply illustrators; they were nothing short of troubadours, painting on wooden panels the tales depicting the cosmic connections of the society in which they lived. Over the years, the cosmic ideas of distant foreign lands were incorporated in the Hausas' system of thought and these allo kafii gida have thus turned into cosmological time capsules impressed on wooden panels.

In view of this challenging cultural context, the owners of these artworks can be described as 'curators' of these secret boards, which, in spite of serving the Islamic religion, actually record Hausa cosmology.

The artefacts adorning the book are truly unique in the field of extra-European art and come from a private collection built over a period of twenty years of painstaking research.