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The Fulani Rulers in Hausaland, as Sultans and Caliphs of Sokoto

1218– /1804–

Northern Nigeria and the adjacent Niger valley

From the later eighteenth century, the position of Islam in West Africa began to be transformed by the appearance of militant, puritanical movements, sometimes with millenarian elements, among the Fulani or Fulbe of western Sudan, in the Futa Jallon plateau region where the Niger and Senegal Rivers rise. This revivalist current was taken up by the Tokolors of Futa Toro, to the south of the Senegal River, where various Imāms or almamis of the Tokolor religious classes established their secular power until the arrival of the French at the end of the nineteenth century; notable among these were Ḥamadu Bari of Masina on the upper Niger and al-Ḥājj ‘Umar b. Sa‘īd Tal in the upper Niger–upper Senegal region. Within these religious movements, the motivating power of Ṣūfī orders, such as the Qādiriyya and the Tijāniyya, was notable.

From Gobir in Hausaland there arose the Tokolor religious leader ‘Uthmān b. Fūdī (fodio ‘learned, holy man’), who began to preach jihād against those whom he regarded as lax Muslims, those compromised, in his view, with the surrounding paganism, and against the animist majority of black Africans. He assumed the ancient title implying political and religious leadership of the Muslim community, ‘Commander of the Faithful’, Amīr al-Mu’minīn, in Hausa Sarkin Musulmi, a title still born by his descendants in Sokoto (who have been also known as ‘caliphs’, following ‘Uthmān’s designation of himself as ‘Commander of the Faithful’, and sultans). With his Fulani followers, ‘Uthmān wore down the uncoordinated resistance of most of the Hausa states, and individual Fulani leaders carved out for themselves principalities as far east as the Adamwa plateau of northern Cameroons, often adopting the title of amīr or lamidu.

His descendants, beginning with Muḥammad Bello, erected a states system which was inevitably based on the old Hausa ones which they had dispossessed, but with new centres of power such as Sokoto or Sakwato, founded in 1224/1909, and where ‘Uthmān’s tomb became a noted place of pilgrimage. The original religious impetus of the jihād was gradually lost, and Fulani rule degenerated into an undisguised slave-raiding economy, causing devastation, depopulation and misery. With power in the hands of local governors, only the religious authority of the rulers in Sokoto was acknowledged. At the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial powers Britain, France and Germany converged on Hausaland and divided it up. British troops entered Sokoto without resistance in 1322/1904, and it thereafter came within the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria which had been set up four years previously. The line of sultans in Sokoto continued, however, under the British policy of indirect rule, namely maintenance of the ruling structures in Nigeria, and into the present Republican period. Sokoto is now the administrative capital of the North-western State of the Nigerian Republic.

EI² ‘Sokoto’ D. M. Last, ‘Fulbe’ (R. Cornevin).

J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, 160–207.

S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria: A Preliminary Survey of their Historical Traditions, 367–417, with a genealogical table at p. 414.

D. Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate, London 1967.

H. A. S. Johnston, The Fulani Empire of Sokoto, London 1967.

J. F. A. Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa, 2nd edn, II, ch. 3 (R. A. Adeleye).

H. Montgomery-Massingberd (ed.), Burke’s Royal Families of the World. II. Africa and the Middle East, 192–4.