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THE JIHĀD OF ʿUTHMĀN DAN FODIO IN THE CENTRAL BILĀD AL-SŪDĀN

The jihād led by ʿUthmān dan Fodio is sometimes called the Fulani jihād because of the predominance of Fulbe in the movement, although the ethnic designation underestimates the importance of Islam. At other times the jihād is referred to as the Sokoto jihād after the capital that was founded on the Rima River in 1809, but again this reference is problematic because Sokoto was often not the seat of government. It is where the tomb of ʿUthmān dan Fodio was located after 1817, but Muhammad Bello actually spent most of his time when he was head of government at his ribāṭ (fortified town) at Wurno, to the north of Sokoto, not in the nominal capital. Sokoto is the current site of the palace of the sultan, the direct descendant of the jihād leadership, as well as the capital of one of the states of modern Nigeria. ʿUthmān dan Fodio as amīr al-Muʾminīn (commander of the faithful), the shehu (Hausa), shaykh (Arabic), sarkin Musulmi (Hausa: leader or commander of the Muslims), and other titles of respect demonstrates that complexity in detail is a feature of the jihād and highlights the centrality of religion. How to do justice to this elaborate nomenclature and a political jurisdiction that included thirty emirates and over fifty subordinate emirates exacerbates the problem. Allegiance was initially focused on ʿUthmān dan Fodio as imām, who delegated authority to specific individuals who were given a flag (tata), although the actual number of flags that were issued is not clear. The plethora of leaders and their retinues can be confusing, which might explain why Murray Last initially designated the state that was established the “Sokoto Caliphate,” a name that was not used at the time.¹ Heinrich Barth did refer to the “Empire of Sokoto” in his informative analysis of the 1850s but also referred to the “empire” as “Sudan.”² Other accounts usually referred to “Sudan” or “Soudan,” as distinct from Borno (Bornu, Bornou), Bagirmi, Wadai, and other sub-Saharan Muslim states.³

The Emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate

The centrality of Sokoto to the jihād movement is undisputed, and the date 1804 is considered a turning point in West African history. In the process of establishing an Islamic state, all the Hausa states were overthrown, Borno lost half its territory, and regions astride the Benue River extending into the mountainous districts beyond the headwaters of the Benue and its tributaries were incorporated, while the Oyo Empire collapsed. These dramatic changes can be seen through a comparison of maps of West Africa dating to around 1800 and around 1836 in which the revolutionary transformations are apparent (map 3.1 and map 3.2). As evident in map 3.1, Oyo dominated most of the coast of the Bight of Benin from Badagry and Porto Novo westward to Ouidah, with Dahomey, moreover, a tributary in this period. In 1800 there was a vibrant trade from the Hausa states and Borno to the south, as well as an east-west trade from the Hausa cities to Asante in the Volta basin in the southwest. By 1837 the area had been transformed as large areas were incorporated into the Sokoto Caliphate. Dahomey asserted its independence from Oyo in 1823, and with Oyo’s final collapse in 1836, several city-states, including Ibadan and Abeokuta, emerged that successfully resisted further caliphate expansion from the north. Moreover, a reform regime under Muhammad al-Kānimī and his successors replaced the ancient Sayfawa dynasty in Borno, which had lost its western provinces and had to rebuild its capital at Kukawa after Birni Ngazargamu was occupied twice and then destroyed in 1810.

The jihād can be examined on the basis of the following chronological benchmarks: first, the initial phase in the Hausa states of Gobir, Zamfara, Kebbi, Kano, Daura, Katsina, and Zaria between 1804 and 1808 that led to the formation of the Sokoto Caliphate; second, the invasion of Borno in 1808 that was repulsed only in 1810; and third, the extension of jihād to Nupe in 1810, with the subsequent civil wars there and the ascendancy of Malam Dendo in 1819.⁴ For comparative purposes, it should be noted that the outbreak of jihād in 1804 coincided with the emergence of Haiti as an independent state in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1817, upon ʿUthmān dan Fodio’s death, the jihād entered a new phase that in many ways continued until 1837 and the end of the first generation of leadership. By then, twenty-eight emirates had been established, as well as the twin capitals at Gwandu and Sokoto. Table 3.1 summarizes key events, leadership, and important results up to 1837. The second benchmark of 1817 was significant because it was not only the year in which ʿUthmān dan Fodio died but the year of local rebellions (tawaye) and the uprising at Ilorin. ʿAbd al-Salām, one of the few jihād leaders who was not Fulbe or Fulani, and his supporters staged an uprising in Zamfara during the succession crisis after the shaykh’s death. In crushing the revolt and executing ʿAbd al-Salām, the Sokoto aristocracy became more firmly identified as Fulani, which was further reflected in the leadership of the revolt at Ilorin. The jihād continued for the rest of the century, with the establishment of all the emirates and the many subemirates in Fombina, also known as Adamawa, with a capital at Yola.

MAP 3.1. Bight of Benin and Central Bilād al-Sūdān, 1800.

Source: Henry B. Lovejoy, African Diaspora Maps

MAP 3.2. Sokoto Caliphate, Borno, and Bight of Benin, 1840.

Source: Henry B. Lovejoy, African Diaspora Maps

TABLE 3.1. Selected Events in the History of the Sokoto Caliphate, 1800–1837

The jihād began in 1804 after a period of twenty years of increasing friction betweenʿUthmān dan Fodio and the government of Gobir and indirectly betweenʿUthmān’s followers and the governments of the other Hausa states—Kebbi, Katsina, Daura, Kano, and Zaria. The issues concerned the insistence of dan Fodio on reforms in the treatment of Muslims and the promotion of an Islamic society. Initially, the king of Gobir, Sarkin Gobir Bawa Jan Gwarzo, conceded a number of measures to ʿUthmān dan Fodio at a public confrontation in 1785 at Magami that related to the guarantee of freedom to preach, the treatment of Muslims and prisoners, and taxation. This success resulted in further calls for reform in matters of marriage, inheritance, and other aspects of social relations.⁵ Dan Fodio toured the upper Sokoto River area between 1788 and 1792 to preach and thereby spread his influence as a reformer. Bawa’s death in 1789–90 and the succession of Bawa’s brother Yakubu as Sarkin Gobir provided the context for dan Fodio’s continuing appeal, but when Yakubu was killed in battle with Katsina in 1794/95, relations with the Gobir government deteriorated rapidly. Yakubu’s successor, Nafata (1794/95–1801), revoked the concessions and instead enacted decrees that declared that no one could convert to Islam, but that everyone had to follow the beliefs of his or her parents. He prohibited the use of turbans and veils for women, and Muslims were not allowed to carry weapons. Nafata’s successor, Yunfa (1801–8), went further in the attempt to curb the growth of the movement, even attempting to assassinate dan Fodio. In December 1803 Gobir forces attacked and occupied Gimbana, a settlement under ʿAbd al-Salām, one of dan Fodio’s foremost supporters. The Shehu, as dan Fodio was known, who lived at Degel, intervened and released the prisoners, effectively defying the Gobir government and committing an outright act of treason. On 21 February 1804 dan Fodio withdrew from Degel and moved to Gudu (Sokwai) near Kwonni, across the border and therefore technically outside Gobir.⁶ The Muslims considered this migration the hijra that preceded jihād, following the pattern of the Prophet Muhammad’s original jihād. Sarkin Yunfa sent emissaries requesting that the Shehu return, but negotiations broke down, and fighting began at Matan-kare on 21 June 1804. The Shehu’s forces won a major victory against Yunfa at Tabkin Kwoto, after which the Shehu moved to Magabci, and shortly thereafter war spread to the other Hausa states.

The expanding conflict pitted the established governments of the Hausa states against dan Fodio’s community and his sympathizers among Muslims throughout the region. Moreover, dan Fodio was able to gain the support of the major clan leaders of the Fulbe pastoralists on the basis of ethnic solidarity that appealed to dissatisfaction of the Fulbe with government taxation and regulation. Without this support, dan Fodio could not have sustained a military campaign. Dan Fodio formally pursued jihād, issuing flags (tata) to key supporters who were charged with undertaking the struggle against the ruling authorities. For example, Moyijo, leader of the Kebbi Fulani, and Muhammad Namoda, leader of the Zamfara Fulani, played major roles in a series of battles in the Sokoto area of the Sokoto, Rima, Kebbi, and Zamfara River valleys, including Matanakari (1804), Tabkin Kwatto (1804), Birnin Konni (1804), Tsuntsuwa (1804), Silame (1805), Kanoma (1805), Birnin Kebbi (1805), Gwandu (1805), Alwassa (1805), Yandoto (1806), Kamba (1806), Fafara (1806), Alkalawa (1808), Tanda (1809), and Illo (1811).⁷ Birnin Kebbi fell on 13 April 1805, thereby toppling the first of the major Hausa governments, while the capital of Gobir, Alkalawa, was taken on 3 October 1808, and the city was destroyed. The defeated Hausa of Gobir regrouped first under the leadership of Salihu, then Gumki, and finally ʿAlī (1817–35) and continued the struggle against the jihād. The Gobirawa, as people from Gobir are referred to in Hausa, eventually settled at Tsibiri after joining the defeated government of Katsina, thus establishing a pocket of resistance on the northern region of Gobir and Katsina. Nonetheless, the jihād spread northward into the region of Adar and secured the support of the main Tuareg confederations of nomads, particularly the Kel Gress, Kel Ewey, and Itisen, and thereby established hegemony over the region as far as Agadez in the Air Massif.⁸ Similarly, the jihād spread eastward to the other Hausa city-states that were tributary to Borno, including Katsina, Daura, Kano, and Zazzau (Zaria).

At the time, the ruler of Kano was Sarkin Kano Alwali, who ineffectively tried to contain the movement but miscalculated the ability of Kano troops to isolate the various Fulbe communities and the clan leaders who controlled considerable resources, particularly horses.⁹ The jihād community very early gained control of Rano, Karaye, Bebeji, Tofa, Aujara, Jahun, Dambarta, and Sankara. Similarly, the Fulbe clans who were settled in western and southern Kano, notably the Jobawa at Utai near Wudil under Malam Bakatsine and his brother Malam Saʿīdu, joined the jihād. In the southwest the Fulbe joined the uprising. The Suleibawa clan, the strongest and most numerous Fulbe faction, was centered at Kiru under Malam Jamau, who was able to control the territory from Kiru to Recifa and Kwassallo in northeastern Zazzau. The Danejawa were centered around Zuwa under Yusufu, also known as Malam dan Zabuwa. Bebeji, due east of Kiru, was under Sarkin Fulani Bebeji. The Ba’awa, whose Yolawa segment was considered the most senior of all the Fulbe clans, were further north under Malam ʿAbdurraḥmān Goshi and Malam Jibir. Due north of Kano at Matsidau and Shiddar were the Dambazawa under Muhammadu Dabo Dambazau. The Yerimawa clan under Malam Mayaki dan Tunku was at Dambarta. Taken together, these clans were strategically located near all the main walled towns in the densely populated countryside of the region around Kano City. In Kano City itself several clerical lineages, including the Modibawa or Mundubawa under Suleimanu and the Gyenawa under Malam Dikoyi and Zarawa, were loyal to Shehu dan Fodio. Besides the strong Fulbe support for the jihād, there were also key Hausa supporters, including those under Malam Usuman. One of the leading Hausa judges (alkali), Yusufu, who was at Kura, the important dyeing center south of Kano, was another of the leading judges. Alkali Yusufu headed a Hausa faction known as Kunjiya.

The battle at Dan Yaya in early 1807 was a crippling defeat for Sarkin Kano Alwali’s forces. Alwali’s attempt to confront the Fulbe clans failed, although even then the jihād was far from victorious. Another battle at Burumburum in southern Kano also resulted in defeat for the Kano government. Alwali was forced to flee north toward Damagaram, where he joined the defeated rulers of Katsina and Daura, Sarkin Katsina dan Kasawa and Sarkin Daura Abdu. Even after Alwali’s flight, large areas of Kano still were not under the effective control of the jihād armies, including the towns of Rano, Dutse, and Birnin Kudu, the districts of Gezawa, Gabazawa, Girke, Babura, Dambarta, and Kumbotso, and the area around Kura. Finally, in April–May 1807, the jihād forces occupied Kano City, and in 1808 Sarkin Kano Alwali died at Burumburum. Sulaymān became the first emir of Kano, succeeded in 1819 by Ibrāhīm Dabo, both of whom were leading Fulbe clan leaders.

In Katsina the jihād movement erupted under Sarkin Katsina Bawa dan Gima, who had succeeded Sarkin Katsina Gozo (1795–1801) upon the latter’s assassination in 1801.¹⁰ Bawa was particularly hostile to the jihād movement. After the Shehu’s victory at Tabkin Kwatto in 1804, Sarkin Katsina Bawa openly rejected the Shehu’s appeal for reforms and aggressively sought out the Shehu’s supporters who had joined the movement. Bawa ordered attacks on the jihād supporters in Katsina, particularly targeting Malam Muhammadu na Alhaji, who had been with the Shehu at Kirari. Bawa’s death in 1805 brought Maremawa Muhammadu Tsagarana to the Katsina throne, who continued the active campaign to crush the jihād. In March 1805 Malam Muhammadu na Alhaji, who had been with the Shehu, moved back to Katsina territory to lead the jihād there. Malam ʿUmar Dallaji, who would become the first Fulbe emir of Katsina, joined the jama’a (the Muslim community) at Yantumaki in October 1805. Sarkin Katsina Maremawa Muhammadu and Sarkin Daura Abdu led expeditions into Kano in the dry season of 1805–6 to help confront the jihād there, but their forces were defeated by dan Tunku at Dawakin Girma near the Katsina border. As should be clear, the jihād was fought during the long dry season each year because of the difficulties of travel during the rainy season, when rivers were often swollen and extensive flooding occurred in many places.

In the dry season of 1806–7 the three Katsina leaders were Malam Muhammadu na Alhaji, who died in 1807, ʿUmaru Dumyawa, and ʿUmar Dallaji. Together they launched a campaign against Yandoto, located in southern Katsina between Kano and Zamfara and at the time the leading center of opposition among Muslims. Yandoto had long been a center of Islamic learning in the Hausa states, and the opposition of its ʿulamāʾ (Muslim scholars) had been a serious problem in expanding support for the jihād. Its fall set the stage for the next phase in Katsina, when jihād forces from Zamfara and Kano came to Katsina to assist in defeating the reigning Katsina dynasty in the battle of Dankama, where the Sarkin Katsina was killed. By February–March 1808 ‘Umar Dallaji had moved into Katsina as emir. Nonetheless, the jihād was far from over in Katsina territory; Maska and Gozaki in southern Katsina were subdued only in 1809–10.¹¹

After the protracted siege of Katsina City in 1807, the defeated sarki, Magajin Halidu, fled to Tsirkau in Daura, where he is said to have committed suicide. The new ruler was dan Kasawa, son of a former sarki, who led the Katsinawa north to Damagaram, where they met the defeated ruler of Daura, Abdu. Dan Kasawa spent two years in Zinder but then moved to Gafai, near the boundary between Damagaram and Katsina, where he remained for the next eight to ten years. While dan Kasawa was at Gafai, many Katsina Hausa joined him, although there is no evidence of counterattacks against Katsina during this period. At this time Maradi was the northern province of Katsina, under a Fulani official. Its territory stretched from Tsibiri to Damagaram, north of Fulani-controlled Daura.¹² About 1821 dan Kasawa staged a revolt in Maradi with considerable local support and took not only Maradi but also Garabi, Maraka, Ruma, and Zandam, thus freeing a large section of northwestern Katsina from jihād rule. Dan Kasawa received help from Gobir, Daura, and some Tuareg. When he died in 1831, the independence of Maradi had been secured. In 1835 Muhammad Bello inflicted a severe defeat on dan Kasawa’s successor, dan Mari (1835–43) and his Gobir allies, who had also settled at Maradi. The struggle centered on Ruma, which the jihād forces turned into a wilderness. Athough the Gobir forces were at Maradi, they agreed to move to a nearby location, Tsibiri, a few kilometers west of Maradi. Despite repeated attempts, Caliph ʿAliyu Babba (1842–59) of Sokoto failed to take Tsibiri and Maradi, and thereafter Maradi posed a continuing threat to the caliphate. Under the leadership of dan Baskore (1854–75), Maradi allegedly conducted eighty-three raids against caliphate territory.¹³ This vulnerability to sudden raiding continued for the rest of the century, necessitating the maintenance of walled towns throughout Katsina, Zamfara, Kano, and northern Zaria.

In Daura, Malam Ishi’aku became the jihād leader; he had taught the children of the reigning Daura monarch, Sarkin Gwari ʿAbdū, but when the jihād broke out, he went to Degel to be with the Shehu.¹⁴ He was given a flag with instructions to pursue the jihād in Daura. When Daura fell in the dry season of 1805–6, Sarkin Gwari and the Hausa leadership retreated to Damagaram and eventually established two independent enclaves, one at Zango and the other at Baure. ʿAbdū had been given the name Sarkin Gwari because he married a Gwari woman; it was a nickname of contempt. When the exiled Katsina sarki committed suicide at Tsirkau, a Daura vassal town, the Daura forces were forced to retreat to Damagaram with the exiles from Katsina. Sarkin Gwari had appealed to Borno for aid, but none came, allegedly because of famine in Borno. Thereafter, ʿAbdū’s whereabouts are a bit confusing; he spent nine years at Miriya before moving to Falke, Babban Ruwa, and finally Kalgo, where he remained for four years. The court continued to migrate, settling at Sallewa ta Kuykuyo for six years and six months. Then ʿAbdū moved to Yekuwa, about forty kilometers east of Daura City, where he marshaled sufficient support to reestablish control over much of Daura territory. He died there, probably in 1825–26, and was succeeded by his brother, Lukudi, who reigned from 1825 to 1854, initially jointly with Nūḥu, the son of Sarkin Gwari ʿAbdū, who succeeded fully in his own right in 1854. As is clear from this chronology, the exiled government of Daura preserved the state structure but had no firm capital and no firm territorial base.

In Zaria, ʿUthmān dan Fodio’s circular letter calling on the Hausa governments to reform reached Sarkin Zazzau Isiaku Jatau in July 1804.¹⁵ Isiaku accepted the Shehu’s appeal, but when he died in November 1806, his son and successor, Makau, repudiated the agreement. The Shehu then appointed Malam Mūsā to lead the jihād in Zaria with the support of troops from Zamfara and elsewhere. Malam Mūsā was a Fulbe cleric who came from the town of Malle, south of Timbuktu, and had studied under the Shehu. It was unusual for someone to receive a flag who was not from the area, but apparently the Shehu did not think that there was any local Fulbe leader in Zaria with the credentials to confront the Hausa dynasty. There were several Fulbe lineages located in Zaria territory; near present-day Kaduna were the Bornawa, led by Yamusa and his brother Bapaiyo and the Suleibawa, under Malam Kilba and his son Audusallami. There were other Suleibawa at Kwassallo and Ricifa to the northeast of Zaria. Mūsā was successful in fashioning a coalition and defeated Makau in December 1808, forcing the Hausa government to retreat southward, where Makau established a new base at Abuja. Malam Mūsā ruled at Zaria until his death in 1821.

The Zaria jihād affected a wide region largely to the south of Birnin Zaria. Vassal towns were conquered or established at Keffi, Jema’a, Doma, and later Kwotto, southeast of Keffi. Lere was founded to the east of Zaria, while the non-Muslim Gwari of Kuriga were subdued. Other vassal states in the south included Kajura and Kauru; in the west were Gwari at Lapai and Kusheriki. Karigi had a similar status in the north of Zaria. Zaria forces raided as far as Wukari in Jukun country. Initially Zaria ruled Lapai and Lafia, but at local request to Sokoto, Lafia was transferred to Bauchi, and Lapai was later placed under Bida.

The death of Malam Mūsā created a succession crisis that was resolved through the intervention of Sokoto. Over the course of the rest of the century, four different Zaria factions came to power, effectively rotating the emirship. The four lineages were the different Fulbe lineages, the Bornawa, Suleibawa, Katsinawa, and Mūsā’s family, known as the Mallawa. Yamusa of the Bornawa, who ruled from 1821 to 1834, emerged as the strongest Fulbe leader under Mūsā, and by the end of Mūsā’s rule they were running the state almost jointly. Mūsā never assumed the title of emir, governing simply as malam, or cleric, and shunning the title of emir or sarki. Yamusa continued this tradition, which differed from those in all the other emirates. The chief opposition was Jaye of the Suleibawa, who became madaki, and the presumed successor, and when he died, his son Hamada became madaki and the chosen successor. On the death of Yamusa, the succession had to go either to the Mallawa or the Bornawa, but to avoid conflict, the decision on succession was referred to Sokoto, and Muhammad Bello selected ʿAbdulkarīm of the Katsinawa lineage as a compromise candidate.

By attacking the Hausa dependencies of Borno, the jihād leadership was on a collision course with Borno itself, which had been the imperial overlord of Katsina, Daura, Kano, and Zazzau. As previously noted, Borno was ineffective in providing support for any of the regimes in those states and also was far from successful in stemming the eastward drift of jihād into Borno territory or to its south into Mandara and the Benue River basin.¹⁶ A titled official, Galadima Dunama, located at Nguru, administered the western portions of Borno and the large district that would become portions of the emirates of Hadejia, Katagum, Jema’are, and Misau. There were three principal Fulbe leaders in the area: Bi Abdur, Lerlima, and Ibrāhīm Zaki. Bi Abdur was centered near Hadejia and was a functionary under Galadima Dunama, but he sent his brother to the Shehu to get a flag, probably in 1805. They attacked Hadejia and Auyo to the southwest of Hadejia and drove Dunama from Nguru in 1807. To the south, the Fulbe were centered at Deya under two learned men, al-Bukhārī, who died before hostilities began, and Goni Mukhtār, who then assumed the leadership of the southern Fulbe. Mai Aḥmad, the ruler of Borno, sent several expeditions under his official, the Kaigama, in an attempt to subjugate Goni Mukhtār, but the Borno forces were defeated each time. Mai Ahmad then issued a drastic decree ordering all Fulbe in Borno to be killed, which prompted a Fulbe exodus in great numbers toward the south and west. Other Fulbe from Borno joined Buba Yero, who had already been conquering larger areas of what became Bauchi and Gombe even before the jihād had begun. At this point, according to Louis Brenner, ʿUthmān dan Fodio was not fully aware that the Fulbe in western Borno had staged an uprising against Mai Ahmad.¹⁷ In Infāq al-Maysūr, Bello’s account of the jihād, Borno receives scant mention in this period.

Mai Ahmad sent repeated expeditions against those Fulbe under Bi Abdur and Lerlima and also against Goni Mukhtār. Lerlima was overcome, but Bi Abdur not only repulsed the Borno attacks but also succeeded in killing the Galadima. Thereupon the Fulbe forces made deep raids into Borno, spreading terror and destruction and creating countless refugees. When Bi Abdur died in early 1808, Ibrāhīm Zaki became the leader of the Fulbe forces and mounted a campaign to take the Borno capital at Birni Ngazargamu. Although the first assault was repulsed, he succeeded in taking the city late in 1808, ransacking the palace and sending an enormous amount of booty to Sokoto. According to Brenner, “All the territory west and south of Birni Gazargamu had been laid waste.”¹⁸ Mai Aḥmad was forced to flee and regroup. In doing so, he turned to Muhammad al-Amīn b. Muhammad al-Kānimī, who was a respected scholar residing at Ngala, southwest of Lake Chad. Mai Aḥmad was now old, and unwisely going against the custom that prevented succession until after the death of the mai, he passed the kingship to his son, Dunama (not to be confused with the deceased Galidima of Nguru). Aḥmad died a few months later, but the consequences of the unusual transfer of power would affect Borno politics subsequently because it could be considered an illegal measure. In approaching Muhammad al-Kānimī, Dunama effectively admitted that his government could not survive without additional leadership. Al-Kānimī had spent the first years of his life in Murzuk in the Sahara and had studied in Tripoli. In the 1790s he went on pilgrimage with his father, who died before they could return. Al-Kānimī remained in the East for about ten years and returned to Borno through Wadai and Darfur. His ascendancy in Borno rested on the recognition of his status as an al-ḥājj, having returned from pilgrimage to Mecca, and as a learned scholar and teacher.

When al-Kānimī became involved in Borno politics in 1809, the jihād had already spread to the region of Ngala and Mandara, Borno’s southern province. Muhammad Wabi was the Fulbe leader in the Ngala area and joined the jihād, but al-Kānimī defeated him in battle. Al-Kānimī was then asked to help liberate Birni Ngazargamu in early 1809, which was accomplished, and the Fulbe leader Goni Mukhtār was killed. Mai Dunama then had to pacify the countryside to the west of Birni Ngazargamu that had been destroyed. By then, Ibrāhīm Zaki’s capital was at Katagum, now one of the emirates under Sokoto. Ibrāhīm Zaki not only repulsed Mai Dunama’s army but also forced Borno’s retreat eastward, while Goni Mukhtār’s son and successor, Muhammad Manga, regrouped the Fulbe to the south. Nonetheless, by this time al-Kānimī had become the principal supporter of Mai Dunama and was given an extensive fief in the Ngurno area, with its largely Kanembu population, as a reward. Al-Kānimī also had wide appeal among Shuwa Arabs.

Because of Dunama’s failure to stem the jihād, his court organized a coup d’état, claiming that his succession had been illegal, and instead installed his uncle, Muhammad Ngileruma, who then built a capital at Birni Kafela, only a few kilometers from Ngurno, al-Kānimī’s stronghold. However, Ngileruma was on the throne for only three or four years before al-Kānimī deposed him and reappointed Dunama as mai. Al-Kānimī was then given even more land stretching from Ngala to Ngurno, which consolidated his position among a following that was largely non-Kanuri but included Kanembu, Shuwa, Tibu, Tuareg, and Bagirmi, the main subordinate populations in the Borno state. Under al-Kānimī’s leadership, Borno was able to remain independent of the Sokoto jihād, but at considerable cost. The Sayfawa dynasty in the end was eliminated, with al-Kānimī and then his son becoming supreme ruler with the title of Shehu, the honorific by which ʿUthmān dan Fodio was also known. Moreover, the capital of Borno was eventually moved from Birni Kafela to Kukawa, which al-Kānimī had founded in 1814.¹⁹

The removal of the Zaria dynasty to Abuja to the south near the confluence of the Niger and the Benue Rivers coincided with the outbreak of jihād in Nupe in 1810–12. ʿUthmān dan Fodio recognized the Nupe cleric ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nufawi also known as dan Tsatsa (d. 1829), as the leader by issuing him a flag. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān visited the Shehu and pledged his submission. In 1813 Muhammad Bello confirmed his support in Infāq al-Maysūr, noting after an early campaign that “there returned our people [to Sokoto] who had gone to Nupeland to help ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nufawi against the army of Nupe. And indeed they fulfilled their trust. We put forward our best endeavour and brought back what there was to bring [i.e., booty].”²⁰ Although ʿAbd al-Raḥmân occupied the Nupe capital, Mokwa, for six months, he was unable to hold it and had to appeal for external assistance from Sokoto.²¹ The Nupe king, Etsu Yikanko, was killed but was succeeded by Jimada. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān supported Majiya for the position of etsu, however, and Majiya’s appointment was eventually achieved after Jimada was killed at Gbara on the Kaduna River near the confluence with the Niger. However, after the death of ʿUthmān dan Fodio in 1817 and the division of the caliphate into two spheres, Malam Dendo, who was a Fulbe leader, rose to prominence among the Muslims. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān owed his allegiance to ʿUthmān dan Fodio, but the Gwandu regime became the direct overlord of Nupe after 1817 and favored Malam Dendo. When British diplomat Hugh Clapperton was at Kulfo in 1826, he was in contact with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the “learned malam,” whose influence was much reduced, although he was still revered as a pioneer of jihād and a saint.²² By then the shifting politics of Nupe had placed him at odds with Dendo, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was murdered three years later. Michael Mason has established conclusively the complicity of Dendo in the assassination, suggesting a plot to undermine indigenous Nupe leadership.²³

Because of shifting alliances, the course of the jihād was confusing. Nupe was now involved in a protracted civil war that lasted until 1857, when Bida was finally established as the capital of a Nupe emirate.²⁴ The various candidates for succession to the Nupe kingship sought the support of the jihād leadership but then attempted to limit the influence of the Muslim leadership, which prevented an easy transition. Majiya, who was located at Zugurma, had been Dendo’s student and had initially supported ʿAbd al-Raḥmān in 1810–12. He consolidated his rule after Jimada was killed.²⁵ Majiya then established his capital at Raba on the Niger.²⁶ Jimada’s son Idrīsu and the supporters of Jimada fled to Ilorin. Majiya attempted to consolidate his position as etsu between 1820 and 1824 by turning on his Muslim allies, who also moved to Ilorin. Malam Dendo then formed an alliance with Idrīsu and the exiled Nupe faction. Majiya attacked Ilorin in 1823–24 but was defeated and driven back across the Niger River. Malam Dendo occupied Raba, while Idrīsu was now recognized as etsu.

In the course of this uncertainty, the two small emirates of Lafiagi and Agaie were established on the south side of the Niger around 1824. To make matters even more confusing, Idrīsu then turned on the Muslims and after 1825 tried to drive them out of Raba, which forced Dendo to reestablish an alliance with Majiya. In early 1826 Gwandu sent an army to support Dendo, and the Gwandu forces returned with one thousand slaves and four thousand gowns, Nupe being a center of textile production.²⁷ When Clapperton entered Nupe in April 1826, Idrīsu had just been driven out of Raba, and it looked as if Majiya was firmly in control of the etsu throne at Jangi, with Dendo behind the scenes in Raba nearby. Although the allied forces of Ilorin Muslims had supported Idrīsu in defeating Majiya, forcing Majiya to withdraw to Tabria in 1825, Dendo changed his mind and apparently summoned his former student to Raba for his submission. Meanwhile, Idrīsu regrouped, with the support of Beni river traders who had access to firearms from the Niger River trade, and persisted in his bid for the throne. Nonetheless, Majiya reigned until his death around 1841.²⁸ Malam Dendo died in 1833, but the succession to the emirship was contested. Usman Zaki became emir at Raba, but his brother Masaba refused to recognize him and settled at Lade near Lafiagi on the south of the Niger. Civil war continued, now among the Muslims, not the claimants to the Nupe throne. A settlement was reached only in 1857 with the foundation of Bida as the capital of a united Nupe emirate.²⁹

The uprising in the military at Ilorin in 1817 and the subsequent incorporation of Ilorin as an emirate into the Sokoto Caliphate in 1823 has special significance in linking the jihād movement as a major event in Atlantic history with the age of revolutions. The concentration of Muslims in the military undermined Oyo’s hegemony in the interior of the Bight of Benin and made it clear that jihād was a continuous affair of expansion that combined ethnicity and religion in a tenuous union. Ilorin formally became an emirate in 1823 when the son of Alimi Ṣāliḥ, ʿAbd al-Salām, became its first emir, reporting to Abdullahi dan Fodio at Gwandu and not Muhammad Bello at Sokoto. Meanwhile, Dahomey, tributary to Oyo since the 1730s, asserted its independence at the same time, thereby placing Oyo in a delicate position that relied on support from Borgu and involved Oyo in the confrontation in Nupe. The results were disastrous, as reflected in the emigration to the south of refugees who wanted nothing to do with Islam, founding new centers at Ibadan, at Abeokuta, and elsewhere.³⁰

Ilorin was particularly important because of the role it played in the collapse of Oyo and the subsequent migration of Yoruba to Cuba and Brazil and indirectly to Sierra Leone and Trinidad, as well as the transformation of much of the interior of the Bight of Benin. The attempt of Are Anakamfo to achieve autonomy within Oyo by using his position as general of the alafin’s army to force the hand of the Oyo aristocracy at the capital unintentionally released the forces of jihād. Traditionally, the alafin could not personally go to war but had to depend on the titled officials of the Oyo Mesi, the council of state, which resulted in periodic tension and outright crisis. In the middle of the eighteenth century Basorun Gaha, the leading official of the Oyo Mesi, usurped power from the alafin. If the Oyo Mesi voted against the alafin’s continuation, the alafin had to commit suicide, a proviso that Basorun Gaha manipulated to his advantage several times until the rise of Alafin Abiodun, who reigned until 1789. Because the alafin could not appear on the battlefield, Abiodun promoted his military position through an army stationed at Ilorin under a subordinate official with the title are ona kakanfo, which Afonja held at the time of the uprising in 1817. However, Afonja’s political ambitions backfired because the 1817 uprising was virtually a military coup d’état, so that Afonja remained in power, but power increasingly shifted to the proponents of jihād. Most of the military were enslaved young Muslims who had come from farther north and were Muslims and hence were susceptible to the appeal of ʿUthmān dan Fodio. Under the leadership of Alimi Ṣāliḥ, the Muslim faction steadily promoted the cause of Islamic uprising. Bands of Fulbe roamed the countryside, attacking villages and enslaving people. Conflict between Oyo and Ijesha over control of the trade routes to the coast erupted into warfare, known as the Owu wars, that led to the destruction of the Owu province and the migration of refugees to the south.³¹

Because of the jihād in Oyo, the capital district of Oyo was completely abandoned by 1836 through flight and slavery; the previously heavily populated region around the capital was transformed into a virtual desert, which it remains largely to this day. The conflict is often referred to as the Yoruba wars in the scholarly literature and is sometimes even characterized as a civil war; it is clear that the establishment of Ilorin as a recognized part of the Sokoto Caliphate was more than a civil disturbance, and, even more relevant, that the jihād was primarily responsible for the collapse of the Oyo state and the concurrent and subsequent warfare that resulted in the enslavement of the overwhelming majority of people who became part of the Yoruba diaspora.³² Hence the resulting activities of Yoruba in both Cuba and Brazil have to be considered, in my opinion, as an outgrowth of the jihād movement of West Africa, not merely an extension of slave resistance that was associated with the age of revolutions. The complexities of ethnicity and the struggle that arose from religious conflict affect an interpretation of the Malês uprising in Bahia and also Yoruba resistance in Cuba and Muslim unrest in Sierra Leone.³³ By the time of Muhammad Bello’s death in 1837, Ilorin had successfully established its supremacy over the northern Yoruba country under Fulani leadership, while opposition to jihād was firmly established at the new Yoruba centers to the south, especially at Ibadan. Where Oyo had once controlled an extensive part of Yorubaland that stretched to the sea at Porto Novo and Badagry and included Dahomey, its port at Ouidah, Mahi country, and parts of Borgu, its territory was steadily whittled away by 1836.

Bishop Samuel Crowther, himself of Oyo origin, attributed the destruction of Oyo towns in the 1820s to Muslims, whom he called Fulani even though many spoke Yoruba, and whose origins beyond that cannot always be determined.³⁴ Similarly, Clapperton and his servant, John Lander, reported the destruction of towns in the 1820s, which they attributed to Muslims, whom they also identified as Fulani. These accounts are based on their personal observations while traveling from Badagry to Katunga, the capital of Oyo, in 1826–27 and on observations by Lander and his brother in 1830. As Clapperton and the Lander brothers seem to have understood, the degree to which people spoke more than one language and the role of Islam as a revolutionary force in Oyo made ethnic labeling complicated. Their description of a corridor of destruction extending from the coast along the main commercial corridor to the heart of Oyo and the capital at Katunga included reports on Owu.³⁵ Other contemporary sources confirm the complexity of ethnic identification and the importance of religion as a decisive factor. Crowther met several “Yoruba” soldiers in 1841 and 1857 in the service of the Nupe emirates. They spoke fluent Yoruba but also spoke Hausa, Nupe, and Fulfulde, and because they were in the employ of the Muslim emirates, they were referred to as Fulani, as they were known in Hausa.³⁶

There are two theaters of jihād that remain to be discussed: first, the regions of the Benue River basin to the east and south of the central Hausa emirates, which were under Sokoto after the division of the caliphate in 1817, and second, the Niger River valley and the area to the west of the caliphate’s capital districts, which paid homage to Gwandu. The eastern portion included Gombe, Bauchi, and, above all in importance, Adamawa. The region was to the south of Borno and with some exceptions, especially in the Jukun area, had few centralized states and was largely devoid of a Muslim population except for itinerant merchants and wandering Fulani pastoralists. By contrast, the region under Gwandu to the west consisted of a series of small emirates, with the exception of Masina, which in any event became the independent jihād state of Hamdullahi after 1817, although it maintained diplomatic relations with Sokoto. Historically, most of this region had once been part of the Songhay Empire.

Buba Yero, leader of the Fulbe in the Gongola River valley, had already been conquering territory in what became Bauchi and Gombe even before the jihād.³⁷ There were no centralized states in this region, and hence when the jihād was declared in 1804, he quickly pledged his allegiance. He then continued his campaign to subdue the various decentralized ethnic groups in the region and fashion a state centered on the town of Gombe in the Gongola River valley. He also issued flags of his own, most notably to Hammarwa, the head of the Fulbe who had migrated from Kiri in the Gongola valley, in 1812. Hammarwa specifically targeted the Jukun state of Kona that straddled the Benue, with its capital at Akuro. Muri was founded as the capital of the Fulbe Kiri in 1817. Hammarwa’s campaigns against the dispersed non-Muslim ethnic groups resulted in gradual expansion from Muri to the south and southwest. However, Hammarwa fell out with his overlord in Gombe, a punitive expedition was sent to Muri in 1833, and Hammarwa and his son were both executed. Thereafter, Sokoto intervened and established Muri as a separate emirate.³⁸

Bauchi emerged as an emirate in the region east of the Jos Plateau, which, like Gombe, was an area without centralized states and whose population was almost entirely non-Muslim. In 1804 ʿUthmān dan Fodio gave a flag to one of his students, Isiyaku, who was from the area where Bauchi would emerge as an emirate, but Isiyaku apparently died before reaching Kano on his way to implement the campaign. The question of who should succeed him was referred back to the Shehu, who opted to give the leadership to Isiyaku’s student Yakubu (1753–1833), who had been with Isiyaku at Degel studying with the Shehu. Yakubu was unusual in that he was not Fulbe but came from the Gerawa, who were generally not Muslims, although Yakubu’s father and grandfather were Muslims and had been good friends of Isiyaku. Yakubu was the only person who was not Fulbe to become the head of one of the emirates; the other two leading non-Muslims, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān of Nupe and ʿAbd al-Salām of Zamfara, never attained that distinction. Yakubu raided as far as the Benue River, conquering Lafia Beriberi, the Wurkan hills, parts of the Gongola River valley, and Leri. His son Ibrāhīm succeeded him and had to face revolts of Ningi, Dass, and Duguri.

Shehu dan Fodio appointed Moddibbo Adama as the supreme leader for the region south of the Benue River, which was another region without centralized states, and in reference to his key role the emirate became known as Adamawa, although it was also known as Fombina, or the lands of the south in Fulfulde. Adama marshaled the Fulbe in this area to form military units and found towns that were then recognized as part of the emirate. In this way the Fulbe established Garoua, Maroua, Rai, Chebowa, and Gurin and later Ngaoundere, Tibati, Kontcha, and Banyo. Adama also had to navigate rivalries among the Fulbe clans that required the use of force, as in conflicts between Rai Bouba and Yola and of Tibati with Ngaoundere and Yola. Adama ruled from 1809 to 1847 and was succeeded by Lawal, who ruled from 1847 to 1872.³⁹ As head of Adamawa, Adama was referred to as lamido, Fulfulde for “ruler,” rather than as emir.⁴⁰ Adama received his flag from the Shehu in March 1809 and in 1810–11 led the campaign against Mandara and Borno, but failing to consolidate his position there, he subsequently issued over forty flags himself and by 1825–30 was responsible for founding Ngaoundere, Banyo, Kontcha, and Tignere on the Mambila Plateau. In 1841 he established his capital at Yola on the Benue River.⁴¹ Adamawa or Fombina, with an area of 100,000 square kilometers, had forty subemirates, the most important of which were Tibati, Ngaoundere, Rai-Buba, Maroua, Banyo, Garoua, and the capital at Yola.⁴²

In contrast to the expansive extension of the jihād to the southeast of the Hausa heartland of the Sokoto Caliphate, the consolidation of the emirates to the west of Gwandu was small scale, although it nonetheless encompassed a territory along the Niger River and to the west of the Niger that was still of considerable size. Eight emirates were established west of Gwandu, mostly in the Niger River valley. Nine small emirates were established west of Gwandu, mostly in the Niger River valley, although Liptako, with its capital at Dori, was located 120 km west of the Niger River.

The Justification of Jihād

The deep concern expressed by the Sokoto leadership over the issue of slavery has prompted Humphrey Fisher to suggest that ʿUthmān dan Fodio may have been a “Muslim Wilberforce,” which is a useful comparison in attempting to provide a perhaps shocking equation of thinking over the issues of slavery. According to Fisher, “One of the major causes of the jihād which began in Hausaland in 1804 was the increasing enslavement of free Muslims,” which ʿUthmān dan Fodio and his son Muhammad Bello in particular found alarming.⁴³ Whether or not the incidence of enslavement had increased in the years before 1804 is uncertain, although slaves from the central Bilād al-Sūdān became more common in the export ledgers of the Bight of Benin in the last third of the eighteenth century than previously, which suggests such an increase.⁴⁴ Inevitably those who were enslaved included respectable Muslims who somehow had been enslaved. Whether or not Fisher’s comparison of Wilberforce and dan Fodio stands up to scrutiny is another matter, considering that Wilberforce was hardly sympathetic to conditions in Africa or that dan Fodio wanted to abolish the slave trade with Christians and had very little interest in the Atlantic world otherwise.

ʿUthmān dan Fodio explained the underlying principles of the movement in Kitāb al-farq, which were to eliminate social injustices introduced by oppressive governments, to combat bid ʿa (innovation), and to promote the full observance of Islam.⁴⁵ In his Tanbīh al-ikhwān ʿalā aḥwāl al-Sūdān dan Fodio wrote, “As for the sultans [of Hausaland], they are undoubtedly unbelievers, even though they may profess the religion of Islam, because they practice polytheistic rituals and turn people away from the path of God and raise the flag of worldly kingdoms above the banner of Islam. All this is unbelief according to the consensus of opinions.”⁴⁶ As the history of Fuuta Bundu, Fuuta Jalon, and Fuuta Toro demonstrates, the jihād of 1804 drew on earlier influences that covered a region from modern Dakar to Khartoum in the Nile valley. The model of Islamic rule was based on a form of government that owed inspiration to the ṣūfī brotherhood, or ṭarīqa, the Qādiriyya, and in turn inspired the Islamic states associated with the Tījāniyya after 1838 and, by the end of the century, the Mahdiyya as well. Of course, this model stands in sharp contrast to the tendency toward republicanism and constitutional monarchy that characterized the age of revolutions studied by Hobsbawm and others. Nonetheless, the revolutionary impact altered the political landscape, the basic components of society, and the economy in ways that fundamentally shaped West Africa.

The ideas that informed the jihād movement were widespread, as reflected in the writings of Aḥmad b. al-Qāḍī b. Abī Bakr b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm, also known as al-Timbuktāwī, in 1813. Aḥmad al-Timbuktāwī was a Fulbe cleric from Timbuktu, as his name indicates, who performed the pilgrimage in the first decade of the nineteenth century. On his return home in 1813, he had occasion to observe the religious practices of the black African community in Tunis, which consisted primarily of enslaved individuals from south of the Sahara who were identified according to the towns and places from which they had been dispatched across the Sahara, such as Kano, Katsina, Timbuktu, and Borno. These identifications do not allow a determination of whether they had been Muslims before their enslavement, but as far as al-Timbuktāwī was concerned, they were not practicing Islam in a manner that met his approval. His comments, therefore, provide a perspective on how Muslims, especially Fulbe, viewed society in sub-Saharan Africa and thereby justified jihād. In his opinion, the blacks of Tunis were involved in spirit-possession cults, known as bori in Hausa, which warranted their enslavement (plate 8). He considered bori a form of religious practice that violated the tenets of Islam. On the basis of what he saw in Tunis, he asserted that:

The it is disobedient to be silent on fitna [dissension] because that is among matters that require fulfilling conditions of al-’amr bi’al-maʿarūf [ordering what is good and forbidding what is evil] since that is plain polytheism, and resisting polytheism is a jihād, and jihād is incumbent even if it causes self-destruction or destruction of the wealth.⁴⁷

Consequently, al-Timbuktāwī believed that the blacks of Tunis were rightly enslaved (plate 9).⁴⁸ Adhering to similar ideas, ʿUthmān dan Fodio in turn inspired a generation and more to oppose bori, and although bori were never eliminated, as al-Timbuktāwī and ʿUthmān dan Fodio might have wished, a Muslim state based on Sharīʿa law was established.

The jihād movement provides the context for analyzing how political change in West Africa mirrored the Atlantic world. One of the legitimizing claims for the necessity of jihād was that political authorities were engaged in what was considered illegal enslavement and, in addition, were selling Muslims into the transatlantic slave trade. The complaints came to a peak in 1804 when the government of Gobir ordered the seizure of followers of ʿAbd al-Salām, one of ʿUthmān dan Fodio’s most fervent disciples, and thereby directly challenged the freedom of dan Fodio’s followers. The government of Gobir alleged that many of those who were seized were slaves who had fled their masters, but from the perspective of the nascent jihād movement, the followers were Muslims whose freeborn status was assumed, although it is impossible to know whether this was true. The thin line between claims of freedom on the basis of adherence to Islam and status at birth were interpreted to the benefit of the claimant; it was the responsibility of slave masters to establish otherwise. As the scholarly literature on the jihād movement makes clear, slavery was a factor in discussions of religion and ideology and pervaded the standards of resistance and aims at reform. When ʿUthmān dan Fodio declared jihād in 1804, he could not have known about developments in Brazil and the Caribbean, and surely he could not have known that in the same year Haiti became an independent state. Nonetheless, there was deep concern among the Muslim intellectual and political leadership about the fact that enslaved Muslims were being sold through Oyo to the Bight of Benin for sale to Europeans, and that some of them actually were sent to St. Domingue because of the French trade at Porto Novo and the commercial involvement of Pierre Tamata as an agent for French merchants, as discussed previously.

The enslavement of freeborn Muslims and their sale to Christians who were involved in the Atlantic trade was of particular concern to Muhammad Bello. Bello specifically condemned the sale of slaves to Oyo, which was clearly articulated in his manifesto and history, Infāq al-Maysūr, which he finished in 1812. In his reference to Oyo, which he called “Yoruba,” he noted, “The people of this country used to receive slaves from this country of ours, and they used to sell them to the aforementioned Christians. I am mentioning this affair so that you will not buy [or sell] a Muslim slave from anyone who brings one there. It is because of this that the calamity is general.”⁴⁹ The preoccupation with the illegal enslavement of Muslims was clearly expressed in the debate between Muhammad Bello and Muhammad al-Kānimī of Borno (plate 10), as discussed in Infāq al-Maysūr and in an ongoing correspondence between the two rulers for another decade. The failure to resolve the issues in dispute ultimately resulted in war between Sokoto and Borno in 1826–27.⁵⁰ The debate over the enslavement of Muslims was one of legitimizing the necessity of jihād but did not extend to the enslavement of non-Muslims or of nonbelievers and apostates in general. The issues that Bello and al-Kānimī addressed related to Islamic law and the regulation of the institution of slavery. Far different from the issues behind resistance to slavery in the Americas, the concern in the Sokoto Caliphate was over the nature of the Muslim state and the role of the state in protecting freeborn Muslims. The jihād rapidly overthrew the principal Hausa governments of Gobir, Kebbi, Kano, Katsina, and Zaria by 1808 and then spread to Borno in the east after 1808⁵¹ and to Nupe in the south by 1810.⁵² From the central Bilād al-Sūdān the shock waves were sent south into Oyo and Yorubaland after 1817 and especially after Ilorin became an emirate within the Sokoto Caliphate in 1823. The issue of slave or free status preoccupied the jihād leadership.

In accusing the governments of the various Hausa states of enslaving free Muslims and thereby providing slaves for southern export, ʿUthmān dan Fodio encouraged slaves to escape or otherwise assert their Islamic identities.⁵³ Hence the proponents of jihād found justification for their actions in protecting Muslims and thereby directly challenged the authority of all the governments of the region. Many enslaved Muslims took advantage of the jihād to assert their freedom after 1804, often by fleeing to the camps of the jihād armies, where they sought protection. To enforce the Gobir decree, as ʿUthmān dan Fodio complained, “The Sultan of Gobir attacked the Sheikh’s people; they fled, for they were afraid. The Gobir army followed them and captured some and slew others, seizing children and women, and selling them in our midst.”⁵⁴ It is likely that many of those who were taken prisoner were in fact people who were considered by the Gobir authorities to have escaped from slavery. ʿAbd al-Salām, one of the Shehu’s Hausa supporters, led a raid on the Gobir detachment, freeing the Muslim captives and clearly demonstrating active rebellion against Gobir authority.⁵⁵ Although it was not always possible to prevent the sale of prisoners who were Muslims, Abdullahi dan Fodio criticized some of his fellow Fulani Muslims in Tazyīn al-waraqāt (1813) as “sellers of free men in the market.”⁵⁶ This was one of the reasons that he became disillusioned with the jihād and emigrated eastward. He was particularly critical of excess, condemning the extent of concubinage, as well as ostentatious clothing and other displays of wealth.⁵⁷

The flight of the enslaved to the cause of jihād is most noticeable in the case of Ilorin, probably because of the availability of documentation. The Ilorin garrison, which consisted of Hausa and other slaves from farther north, mutinied in 1817 in a bid by its commander, Afonja, to topple the Oyo government. Afonja lost his life in 1823 when he tried to rein in the jihād.⁵⁸ As ʿAlī Eisami reported from his own experience, “All the slaves who went to the war, became free; so when the slaves heard these good news, they all ran away.”⁵⁹ ʿAlī, a Borno slave, was sold to merchants at the coast for sale overseas because his master feared that he would join the Muslims. The jihād continued into the 1820s, and the Muslims offered “liberty to all the Mahometen slaves, and encouraged others to kill their pagan masters and join them.”⁶⁰ Ilorin became virtually autonomous, which contributed to an ongoing crisis that resulted in the eventual destruction of Oyo in the early 1830s and the incorporation of much of its territory into the caliphate as the Emirate of Ilorin.⁶¹ Similarly, in Nupe in 1831, “all runaway slaves are encouraged to join the ranks on condition of receiving their freedom; and they are joined by a vast number from the surrounding country.”⁶²

From the perspective of the caliphate’s leadership, slavery was closely associated with issues of religion and required the recognition of Islamic law. Muslim forces were supposed to inquire into the religious status of slaves; those who had been born free were usually allowed to contact relatives in order to arrange ransom.⁶³ Muslims who owned slaves were supposed to instruct their slaves in matters of religion, and hence the ideal master-slave relationship involved a Muslim master whose trusted slave was committed to Islam, whether recently acquired or not.⁶⁴ The predominant reason for restricting the sale of slaves was to assure their inevitable conversion to Islam. Procedures for emancipation, including self-purchase and redemption by third parties, allowed for the integration of individuals, as Muslims, into free society.⁶⁵

As far as Sokoto was concerned, enslaving free Muslims was not acceptable, although attacking enemy countries opposed to the imposition of Sokoto’s authority was sanctioned. In Sirāj al-ikhwān, ʿUthmān dan Fodio justified “the legality of fighting those among the learned, the students, and the masses who aid the Unbelievers and the legality of fighting those who neglect to put themselves under the authority of a Muslim ruler.”⁶⁶ At this time the status of Muslims in neighboring Borno was specifically in dispute. When the supporters of the jihād destroyed the Borno capital at Ngazargamu and laid waste a considerable district around the capital, they also enslaved many people who could not flee. The experience of ʿAlī Eisami reveals the extent of destruction at this time. Son of a Muslim cleric, ʿAlī attended Qurʾānic school until he was eleven, but he was enslaved in 1808 when the jihād forces sacked the Borno capital.⁶⁷

Shehu Muhammad al-Kānimī, who rallied Borno against the jihād after 1808, accused the Sokoto leadership of hypocrisy on the slavery issue, elaborating on the arguments of Islamic scholarship, including the views of ʿUthmān dan Fodio himself, to demonstrate the illegality of enslaving the inhabitants of a Muslim country.⁶⁸ Since Borno was a Muslim country, al-Kānimī asked Bello, “Tell us therefore why you are fighting us and enslaving our free people?”⁶⁹ Between 1808 and 1812 al-Kānimī staged a series of counterattacks on Sokoto territory that delivered a punch in the diplomatic offensive against the jihād regime. Thereafter strained relations prevailed between Borno and Sokoto, and open war erupted again in 1826–27. The various letters between Bello and al-Kānimī, the paramount rulers of the two major states in the region, confront the issue of who was a Muslim and therefore should not be enslaved and who were opponents of the jihād and thereby were classified among those who could be enslaved. The biographical accounts of Muslims who were enslaved during the jihād demonstrate that many Muslims were in fact enslaved despite the intentions of the jihād leadership.⁷⁰

Al-Kānimī’s position on jihād provides the most serious critique of the necessity for jihād. According to his interpretation, there were four types of people in every state, namely, unbelievers, apostates, Muslims who cared little about the requirements of religion, and Muslims who “are completely immovable in their faith.”⁷¹ Brenner quotes al-Kānimī as saying that “every country in this region contains these four types. Anyone who gains control over them by aggression will inevitably have the difficulty of discrimination. And whenever the difficulty of discrimination has made all injury general, then the abandonment of the unbeliever is more acceptable than the killing of a Muslim.”⁷² In pursuing the jihād in Borno, Goni Mukhtār argued that Borno could be attacked for five reasons: sacrificing for alms was common at certain places, free women were failing to cover their heads, bribe taking was prevalent, money set aside for orphans was being squandered, and false judgments were being rendered in law courts. Al-Kānimī refused to accept these as constituting unbelief, although he considered these practices reprehensible. According to al-Kānimī, all countries suffered from the presence of sinful actions, but that did not constitute unbelief and warrant jihād.⁷³ The correspondence between Bello and al-Kānimī lasted from 1808 to 1812 and failed to resolve the differences in interpretation.

Predominance of Fulbe (Fulani) in the Jihād

The problem of succession to leadership upon the death of ʿUthmān dan Fodio was well understood and virtually arranged in 1813, four years before the Shehu’s dealth. It was decided to govern through two spheres, one headed by the Shehu’s brother Abdullahi and the other by his son, Muhammad Bello. There seems to have been no question about the continuation of the dominance of Fulbe intellectuals. Abdullahi was stationed at Gwandu, in the heart of the Hausa state of Kebbi, and intended to preside over the western emirates, which at the time may have appeared to be the most likely areas of political expansion. As things turned out, many small emirates were established, and although it could not have been known at the time the decision was made for the division, Ilorin would emerge as an important emirate, and Nupe would continue to struggle for stability until the establishment of Bida in 1857. Muhammad Bello officially resided in Sokoto, which was not far from the former Gobir capital of Alkalawa, now deserted, but in fact spent most of his years as caliph in his ribāṭ at Wurno, to the north of Sokoto. Bello’s sway was over the principal Hausa states that had paid allegiance to Borno, and hence he continued the jihād against Borno and spawned emirates that derived from that campaign, the most important of which, as it happened, was the vast territory of Adamawa with its plethora of subemirates. Bello thereby gained responsibility for the most productive and extensive parts of the caliphate.

The year of dan Fodio’s death marked the emergence of Masina in the far west as the independent state of Hamdullahi, which probably would have pledged its allegiance to the Shehu but chose not to recognize either Abdullahi or Muhammad Bello as its overlord. Equally significant, the Muslim uprising in Ilorin in 1817 undermined Oyo as a principal source of slaves in West Africa and began the migration of enslaved Yoruba to the Americas. Hence as Europe and the Americas were adjusting to the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the British were intensifying antislave patrols on the West African coast and eliminating Muslim corsairs in the Mediterranean, the jihād movement expanded in West Africa through the agency of the dan Fodio family. The final benchmark of 1837 was the death of Muhammad Bello and hence the end of the first generation of the jihād leadership; Abdullahi had died two years earlier and was succeeded by his son. Bello was succeeded by his brother. Bello’s death occurred a year after the final collapse of Oyo, whose capital, along with the region around it, was abandoned in 1836, within a year of the Malês uprising in Bahia and various conspiracies in Cuba that were attributed to the Yoruba and only a few years after British emancipation of slaves in its colonies in 1834. In the interior of the Bight of Benin, the jihād undermined the stability of the whole of Yorubaland. The result was the massive flight of Yoruba to the south and the steady departure of enslaved Yoruba for Brazil, Cuba, and, because of British naval patrols, Sierra Leone.⁷⁴

The jihād was based on Fulbe allegiance and ultimately the use of cavalry and therefore extended the appeal of the Fuuta states in the western Bilād al-Sūdān to areas far to the east (plate 11). The migrations that herders and clerics such as the dan Fodio family had earlier undertaken, the monopoly of cattle production as reflected in the domination of Fulbe clan leaders, and the policies that encouraged Fulani, as the Fulbe were known in Hausa, to settle in the states where they moved their herds reinforced Fulbe ethnicity; the diaspora provided the basis for the consolidation of the jihād aristocracy. The shaykh’s clan, the Toronkawa, which traced its origin to Fuuta Toro and the clerical familes of Torodbe, was associated with an intellectual tradition, a sedentary lifestyle, and a multilingual environment; the dan Fodio family knew Hausa, Fulfulde, Arabic, and probably Kanuri and Tamachek, although apparently not Yoruba. Even as far away as the middle Niger valley this pan-Fulbe allegiance prompted the founding of Hamdullahi, south of Timbuktu, in the region of Masina. Aḥmad Muhammad Lobbo al-Māsinī launched the jihād there in 1816 and initially pledged support to ʿUthmān dan Fodio, which he renounced in 1817 on ʿUthmān’s death.⁷⁵ Thereafter Hamdullahi was an independent jihād state until it was overthrown by al-Ḥājj ʿUmar ibn Saʿīd Tal (1797–1864). If Hamdullahi had remained part of Sokoto, the caliphate would have stretched virtually from the upper Niger River to Lake Chad. At one point Sokoto even laid claim to the coast of the Bight of Benin, although attempts to push to the coast failed. The selection of Bello’s successor pitted Bello’s brother Abubakar Atiku against the Tījānī leader, al-Ḥājj ʿUmar, who had married Bello’s daughters, apparently Mariam initially and, upon her death, Ramatullah.⁷⁶ When Atiku was appointed, ʿUmar left Sokoto for the western Bilād al-Sūdān, where he recruited an army in Fuuta Toro and Fuuta Jalon and also attracted many Hausa volunteers from the Sokoto Caliphate, which enabled him to extend jihād, now under the banner of the Tījāniyya rather than the Qādiriyya, as the previous jihāds had been. By the 1850s much of West Africa had been consolidated into one of the jihād states, and their influence extended throughout West Africa and beyond. The conquest of Hamdullahi created a caliphate of the Tījāniyya and also further consolidated Fulbe/Fulani aristocratic rule.

The model of reformed Islamic rule that Sokoto imposed, which was retained and modified under colonial rule, was based on a form of government that owed inspiration to ṣūfī brotherhoods or ṭarīqa, first the Qādiriyya, then, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the Tijāniyya, and by the end of the century, the Mahdiyya as well. The level and extent of Islamic scholarship on which this movement and its reverberations were based is well documented and has already undergone considerable analysis, as reflected in the bibliographic references to literature in Arabic that has been compiled by John Hunwick and his associates into a massive index of primary source materials in Arabic and other languages written in ajami (Arabic script). The extent of such documentary materials is best epitomized by the enormous libraries of Timbuktu. From the writings of Aḥmad Bābā and his associates in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century onward, it is clear that the Muslim scholars and clerics of West Africa were fully aware of transatlantic slavery and had developed a response to what for some appeared to be an attractive means of making money. The resulting limitations on Muslim involvement in trade with Europeans, that is, Christians, effectively undermined the participation of Muslim regions in the sale of slaves to the Americas, although participation was not entirely eliminated. Muslims were nonetheless sold to the Americas, but the circumstances under which they were sold are very important and instructive. Muslims were indeed taken as slaves across the Atlantic, which demonstrates that some of the enslaved did come from areas of Muslim influence and control, but proportionately, the numbers were relatively few, as is argued in chapter 5, and there was strong resistance to more serious involvement that was effectively enforced, as can be seen by the extent to which West Africa supplied relatively fewer slaves to the Americas than west central Africa.

The triumvirate of ʿUthmān dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi, and his son Muhammad Bello should be included in the list of major figures of the age of revolutions, comparable in terms of the significance of their leadership to that of William Wilberforce and Simón Bolívar. The dan Fodio triumvirate inspired jihād and provided unbroken leadership from the outbreak of hostilities with the government of Gobir in 1804 to the death of Muhammad Bello in 1837. The scholarly tradition associated with the jihād movement and the great outpouring of literary masterpieces in law, government, history, and mysticism, including poetry, is noteworthy. The three leading intellectuals of the Sokoto jihād, ʿUthmān dan Fodio, Abdullahi dan Fodio, and Muhammad Bello, composed numerous pamphlets, treatises, legal opinions, and other texts in the course of their lives.⁷⁷ ʿUthmān dan Fodio died in 1817, his brother in 1828, and his son in 1837. The outpouring of literary texts is astonishing. In fact, it should be considered the product of a leadership of four, since the Shehu’s only daughter, Nana Asma’u (1793–1864), also wrote extensively.⁷⁸ Nana was married to Gidado Junaidu al-Bukhārī, himself a prolific writer who held the title waziri under the Shehu and along with Muhammad Bello and Abdullahi formed the inner chamber of government and military leadership, planning the consolidation of the Islamic state and the perpetuation of a permanent state of jihād that was directed from the emirates and the numerous subemirates that constituted the caliphate. Gidado’s library provided the documentation for Last’s initial study of the Sokoto Caliphate.⁷⁹ This commitment to written texts also included many scholars in Kano and the other emirate capitals, as well as the pilgrims who came to Sokoto, especially after the death of the Shehu in 1817 and the construction of the mausoleum in his honor (plate 12).

Indeed, the rapidity with which jihād spread throughout West Africa after 1804 indicates that ʿUthmān dan Fodio, at least, was already widely respected and successfully could issue flags of leadership and authority for dozens of jihād leaders to undertake revolutionary action in their specific areas. Thus all the Hausa governments were overthrown, although a number of the exiled aristocracies established enclaves of political authority based on walled cities and cavalries in new locations from which the military campaigns of the caliphate could not dislodge them. These enclaves were found at Maradi, Tsibiri, the Ningi hills, and the Jos Pleateau, among other places. Because of this resistance, towns had to be walled; the walls of Kano were particularly impressive (plate 13). In addition, frontier fortifications had to be maintained that were encouraged by Muhammad Bello, such as the fortified town (ribāṭ) that he founded at Wurno, north of Sokoto (plate 14). Hence, for Sokoto, there was a period of consolidation after the tawaye rebellions, and the exiled governments of Gobir and Katsina at Maradi, Tsibiri, and Konya continued to be a problem. The tawaye after the death of ʿUthmān dan Fodio and the continuing inroads of Maradi and Gobir raised issues of national security, the result of which was the construction of numerous ribāṭ throughout the hinterland of Sokoto and near all the major cities of the caliphate. Clapperton provides invaluable information on several of these, including Fanisau, near Kano, which he had also visited in 1824. He provides considerable information on the ribāṭ at Magaria, which was later replaced by Wurno, both located in the Rima River valley northeast of Sokoto.⁸⁰ According to Last, “The establishing of ribats was an extension of Bello’s own practice of living in fortified camps, first at Karindaye, then at Magaria and finally at Wurno where he had his own ribat.”⁸¹ Magaria, Wurno, and Karindaye were located on the eastern edge of the Rima valley, Magaria a short distance northeast of Wurno and Karindaye southwest of Wurno. Of the other major ribāṭ, Silame was established on the frontier against Kebbi, standing on a ridge where the Rima River runs in a narrow valley between high escarpments.⁸²

Hence the jihād movement was never completely successful in conquering West Africa, and the campaigns to subdue enclaves of resistance and opposition to conversion to Islam lasted the whole of the nineteenth century. This was also the case in the areas of Fuuta Toro, Fuuta Bundu, and Fuuta Jalon and in the emergence of the Caliphate of Hamdullahi after 1817. The two independent states of Kaarta and Segu, controlled by the military, waged annual war on the surrounding regions, including the Muslim states of the Senegal valley. After 1837, however, al-Hājj ‘Umar subdued the middle Niger basin from the borders of Fuuta Jalon to the western emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate. Virtually all the interior of West Africa had come under the authority of states established through jihād, thereby reflecting the full impact of the movement. The subsequent respect and deference paid to ʿUthmān dan Fodio, Abdullahi, and Bello are widely acknowledged. All scholarly authorities, including texts written in Arabic and Hausa, attribute intellectual and spiritual leadership to the three, and particularly to the Shehu.

Implications of the Jihād Movement

The long-term implications of the jihād movement are clear. As Last has observed, jihād altered the course of West African history:

The Islamic reform movement in West Africa gave rise to the largest unitary state in nineteenth-century Africa [i.e., the Sokoto Caliphate]. It inspired a literature greater in quantity and higher in learning than any previously seen south of the Sahara. It laid down conditions for generating one of the most productive indigenous economies in West Africa in the later nineteenth century. Indeed, the movement is as central to West African history as is, for example, the French Revolution to Europe.⁸³

The timing and direction of West African reformist thought paralleled the European world. According to Last, there is a need to “examine the underlying causes of these changes and the ways by which they might have affected West Africa.”⁸⁴ Moreover, I argue, the events in Africa must be incorporated into conceptions of the Atlantic world during the age of revolutions; however, the extent to which the events in West Africa shaped or did not shape the Americas and Europe and the ways in which the age of revolutions affected the jihād movement are debatable. As I argue here, the transatlantic world and Islamic West Africa were autonomous, largely disentangled in ways that helped define the Atlantic world.