The Intellectual Legacy of Shaykh Nasiru Kabara in Arabic Sufi Poetry: A Literary Critical Assessment

Shaykh Nasiru Kabara of Kano, one of the most celebrated twentieth-century Sufi scholars and poets in northern Nigeria, produced an extensive body of Arabic-language Sufi poetry within the Qadiriyya tradition that has profoundly influenced Arabic Islamic literary culture across northern Nigeria and the wider West African Muslim world, yet his Arabic poetic works have received almost no critical literary analysis in the academic literature. This study conducts a literary critical assessment of Shaykh Nasiru Kabara's Arabic Sufi poetry, examining his poetic output through the analytical lenses of classical Arabic poetics, Sufi literary theory, and postcolonial African literary criticism. Using textual analysis as the primary methodology, the research selects and closely analyses twenty poems from Kabara's collected Arabic diwan, covering genres of eulogy, mystical longing, spiritual instruction, and prophetic praise. Each poem is analysed for prosodic structure, rhyme scheme, imagery systems, theological content, and intertextual relations with classical Arabic and Sufi literary traditions. Comparative analysis with poems by Senegambian and Sudanese Sufi poets of the same era contextualises Kabara's contribution within the wider West African Sufi Arabic literary tradition. The study establishes Kabara as a major figure in Nigerian and West African Arabic literary history deserving of sustained scholarly attention. Keywords: Nasiru Kabara, Arabic Sufi poetry, Qadiriyya, literary analysis, West African Islam.