e - CIFAS

GOVERNMENT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ABUJA 37
oonsisted entirely of eunuchs; the order of mallams consisted
entirely of Islamic scholars; the order ofhousehold officials, which
contained some slaves as well as freemen, were specially charged
with supervision of the king's household, and formed a royal
council of their o",n; the two orders of public officials were
responsible for territorial, civil, and military administration; and
the remaining order consisted of royal slave-officials.
For lack of any more satisfactory terms, I shall refer to these
groupings as orders of rank, and to their component units as
titles or offices. Offices were associated with titles, and title connoted
rank or membership in a particular order. This use of the
term 'rank' distinguishes it sharply from the more general term
'status'. In the present terminology, a member of the king's line,;
age who lacked office would have royal status but would lack royal
or other rank. As used here, the term 'status' denotes position in a
series of differentiated positions. Thus royal status is distinguished
from non-royal statuses, slave statusfrom free, etc. Inthe context of
state organization, the status of an office is its position within the
system. Such position consists in the last analysis of specific relations
to other units, but these relations also carried prestige. By
status condition we mean position within a series of differentiated
status-groups. Groups of persons differentiated by status are
referred to as status-groups. With these definitions and background
data in mind, the constitution of nineteenth-century Abuja can be
summarized as follows:
Among the titled officials of Ahuja, four basic statuses were
recognized: royals, who were members of the king's lineage or
family, or hereditary chiefs in their own right; freemen, who were
eligible to receive fiefs; eunuchs, who were recruited by the king
from certain villages; and slaves. A fifth status-group consisted of
mallams, who were freemen, butas religious leaders could not hold
fiefs. Mallams were therefore a special group of freemen.
Titles were divided into different rank-orders, and there was an
official order of precedence among title-holders: but this official
order of precedence did not correspond exactly with the grading of
title-holden according to their social status. Promotional opportunities
as well as appointments were defined in terms of social
status. Thus a minor slave-official was eligible for promotion to a
more important office reserved for persons of slave status, and
eunuchs could seek promotion to offices reserved for eunuchs, but
O.z.-