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Nigeria The Savanna States, 1500-1800
The sixteenth century marked a high point in the
political
history of northern Nigeria. During this period, the
Songhai
Empire reached its greatest limits, stretching from the
Senegal
and Gambia rivers in the far west and incorporating part
of
Hausaland in the east. At the same time, the Sayfawa
Dynasty of
Borno asserted itself, conquering Kanem and extending its
control
westward to Hausa cities that were not under Songhai
imperial
rule. For almost a century, much of northern Nigeria was
part of
one or the other of these empires, and after the 1590s
Borno
dominated the region for 200 years.
Songhai's sway over western Hausaland included the
subordination of Kebbi, whose kanta (king)
controlled the
territory along the Sokoto River. Katsina and Gobir also
paid
tribute to Songhai, while Songhai merchants dominated the
trade
of the Hausa towns. It was at this time that the overland
trade
in kola nuts from the Akan forests of modern Ghana was
initiated.
Largely because of Songhai's influence, there was a
remarkable
blossoming of Islamic learning and culture.
The influence of Songhai collapsed abruptly in 1591,
when an
army from Morocco crossed the Sahara and conquered the
capital
city of Gao and the commercial center of Timbuktu. Morocco
was
not able to control the whole empire, and the various
provinces,
including the Hausa states, became independent. The
collapse
undermined Songhai's commercial and religious hegemony
over the
Hausa states and abruptly altered the course of history in
the
region.
Borno reached its apogee under mai Idris Aloma
(ca.
1569-1600), during whose reign Kanem was reconquered. As a
result
of his campaigns, several Hausa cities, including Kano and
Katsina, became tributaries. The destruction of Songhai
left
Borno uncontested as an imperial force, and during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Borno continued to
dominate
the political history of northern Nigeria. Now Borno
became the
center of Islamic learning and trade. Its capital at Birni
Gazargamu, on the Komadugu Yobe River that flows eastward
into
Lake Chad, was well situated in the midst of a prosperous
agricultural district. Textile production was a mainstay
of its
economy. Borno also controlled extensive salt deposits,
which
supplied its most important export to the west and south.
These
reserves were located at Bilma and Fachi in the Sahara, in
the
districts of Mangari and Muniyo adjacent to Birni
Gazargamu, and
on the northeastern shores of Lake Chad.
Despite Borno's hegemony, the Hausa states wrestled for
ascendancy among themselves for much of the seventeenth
and
eighteenth centuries. Gobir, Katsina, Zamfara, Kano,
Kebbi, and
Zaria formed various alliances, but only Zamfara ceased to
exist
as an autonomous state, falling to Gobir in the eighteenth
century. Borno collected tribute from Kano and Katsina,
and its
merchants dominated the trade routes that passed through
Hausaland. Gradually, however, Borno's position began to
weaken.
Its inability to check the political rivalries of the
competing
Hausa cities was one example of this decline. Another
factor was
the military threat of the Tuareg, whose warriors,
centered at
Agades in the center of present-day Nigeria, penetrated
the
northern districts of Borno. They even diverted the salt
trade of
Bilma and Fachi from Birni Gazargamu. Tuareg military
superiority
depended upon camels, which also were used to transport
salt and
dates to the savanna.
The major cause of Borno's decline was a severe drought
and
famine that struck the whole
Sahel (see Glossary) and
savanna
from Senegal to Ethiopia in the middle of the eighteenth
century.
There had been periodic droughts before; two serious
droughts,
one of seven years' duration, hit Borno in the seventeenth
century. But the great drought of the 1740s and 1750s
probably
caused the most severe famine that the Sahel has known
over the
past several hundred years, including that of the 1970s.
As a
consequence of the mid-eighteenth century drought, Borno
lost
control of much of its northern territories to the Tuareg,
whose
mobility allowed them the flexibility to deal with famine
conditions through war and plunder. Borno regained some of
its
former might in the succeeding decades, but another
drought
occurred in the 1790s, again weakening the state.
The ecological and political instability of the
eighteenth
century provided the background for the momentous events
of the
first decade of the nineteenth century, when the jihad of
Usman
dan Fodio revolutionized the whole of northern Nigeria.
The
military rivalries of the Hausa states and the political
weakness
of Borno put a severe strain on the economic resources of
the
region, just at a time when drought and famine undermined
the
prosperity of farmers and herders. Many Fulani moved into
Hausaland and Borno at this time to escape areas where
drought
conditions were even worse, and their arrival increased
tensions
because they had no loyalty to the political authorities,
who saw
them as a source of increased taxation. By the end of the
eighteenth century, some Muslim clerics began to
articulate the
grievances of the common people. Political efforts to
eliminate
or control these clerics only heightened the tensions. The
stage
was set for jihad
(see
Usman dar Fodio and the Sokoto Caliphate
, this ch.).
Data as of June 1991
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