|
Nigeria Usman dan Fodio and the Sokoto Caliphate
By the late eighteenth century, many Muslim scholars
and
teachers had become disenchanted with the insecurity that
characterized the Hausa states and Borno. Some clerics
(mallams) continued to reside at the courts of the
Hausa
states and Borno, but others, who joined the Qadiriyah
brotherhood, began to think about a revolution that would
overthrow existing authorities. Prominent among these
radical
mallams was Usman dan Fodio, who with his brother
and son,
attracted a following among the clerical class. Many of
his
supporters were Fulani, and because of his ethnicity he
was able
to appeal to all Fulani, particularly the clan leaders and
wealthy cattle owners whose clients and dependents
provided most
of the troops in the jihad that began in Gobir in 1804.
Not all
mallams were Fulani, however. The cleric whose
actions
actually started the jihad, Abd as Salam, was Hausa;
Jibril, one
of Usman dan Fodio's teachers and the first cleric to
issue a
call for jihad two decades earlier, was Tuareg.
Nonetheless, by
the time the Hausa states were overthrown in 1808, the
prominent
leaders were all Fulani.
Simultaneous uprisings confirmed the existence of a
vast
underground of Muslim revolutionaries throughout the Hausa
states
and Borno. By 1808 the Hausa states had been conquered,
although
the ruling dynasties retreated to the frontiers and built
walled
cities that remained independent. The more important of
these
independent cities included Abuja, where the ousted Zaria
Dynasty
fled; Argungu in the north, the new home of the Kebbi
rulers; and
Maradi in present-day Niger, the retreat of the Katsina
Dynasty.
Although the Borno mai was overthrown and Birni
Gazargamu
destroyed, Borno did not succumb. The reason, primarily,
was that
another cleric, Al Kanemi, fashioned a strong resistance
that
eventually forced those Fulani in Borno to retreat west
and
south. In the end, Al Kanemi overthrew the centuries-old
Sayfawa
Dynasty of Borno and established his own lineage as the
new
ruling house.
The new state that arose during Usman dan Fodio's jihad
came
to be known as the Sokoto Caliphate, named after his
capital at
Sokoto, founded in 1809. The caliphate was a loose
confederation
of emirates that recognized the suzerainty of the
commander of
the faithful, the sultan. When Usman dan Fodio died in
1817, he
was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Bello. A dispute
between Bello
and his uncle, Abdullahi, resulted in a nominal division
of the
caliphate into eastern and western divisions, although the
supreme authority of Bello as caliph was upheld. The
division was
institutionalized through the creation of a twin capital
at
Gwandu, which was responsible for the western emirates as
far as
modern Burkina Faso--formerly Upper Volta--and initially
as far
west as Massina in modern Mali. As events turned out, the
eastern
emirates were more numerous and larger than the western
ones,
which reinforced the primacy of the caliph at Sokoto.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were
thirty
emirates and the capital district of Sokoto, which itself
was a
large and populous territory although not technically an
emirate.
All the important Hausa emirates, including Kano, the
wealthiest
and most populous, were directly under Sokoto. Adamawa,
which was
established by Fulani forced to evacuate Borno, was
geographically the biggest, stretching far to the south
and east
of its capital at Yola into modern Cameroon. Ilorin, which
became
part of the caliphate in the 1830s, was initially the
headquarters of the Oyo cavalry that had provided the
backbone of
the king's power. An attempted coup d'état by the general
of the
cavalry in 1817 backfired when the cavalry itself revolted
and
pledged its allegiance to the Sokoto Caliphate. The
cavalry was
largely composed of Muslim slaves from farther north, and
they
saw in the jihad a justification for rebellion. In the
1820s, Oyo
had been torn asunder, and the defeated king and the
warlords of
the Oyo Mesi retreated south to form new cities, including
Ibadan, where they carried on their resistance to the
caliphate
and fought among themselves as well.
Usman dan Fodio's jihad created the largest empire in
Africa
since the fall of Songhai in 1591. By the middle of the
nineteenth century, when the Sokoto Caliphate was at its
greatest
extent, it stretched 1,500 kilometers from Dori in modern
Burkina
Faso to southern Adamawa in Cameroon and included Nupe
lands,
Ilorin in northern Yorubaland, and much of the Benue River
valley. In addition, Usman dan Fodio's jihad provided the
inspiration for a series of related holy wars in other
parts of
the savanna and Sahel far beyond Nigeria's borders that
led to
the foundation of Islamic states in Senegal, Mali, Ivory
Coast,
Chad, Central African Republic, and Sudan. An analogy has
been
drawn between Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the French
Revolution
in terms of its widespread impact. Just as the French
Revolution
affected the course of European history in the nineteenth
century, the Sokoto jihad affected the course of history
throughout the savanna from Senegal to the Red Sea.
Data as of June 1991
|
