Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, 2015This study examines three poems composed by a West African Muslim scholar known by the name Alḥājj 'Umar b. Abi Bakr b. 'Uthman Krachi (1858-1934). He was born in the Northern Nigerian city of Kano where he completed his education. He then settled in the mid-Volta region of present-day Ghana to teach, write and serve as community leader. This moment coincided with intensive colonial invasions into the region and Alḥājj 'Umar viewed it all with mixed feelings of presentiment and hope. Within a period of seven years, he composed the three poems which came to be known as his "colonial poems" to give account of the historical clashes between the European forces and Africans that culminated into the official establishment of colonial administration across the region. The first two poems were composed in Arabic in 1899 and 1900 respectively, while the last one was composed in 1907 in Hausa Ajami (the native language of the poet). The three poetic narratives are considered from a structural-functional analytic perspective derived from the theoretical formulations of van Gennep and Victor Turner regarding the ritual transformational tripartite process of the Rite of Passage. Following Professor Suzanne Stetkevych's pioneering study of the Arabic qaṣīdah, 'Umar's qaṣīdah have been examined as representing the trajectory of a life-changing ritual transformation in the poet's world view (as well as Africa generally) motivated by the European colonial invasion of Africa from 1884 to around 1910. The tripartite structures of the poems (the nasib or prelude, the rahil or journey and the ghard or closure) are analyzed on the basis of the tripartite structure of the rite of passage: pre-liminal/separation, liminal/margin, post-liminal/re-aggregation that correspond to the symbolic ritual process of the poet's psychological transformation.