The Revolutionary Aspect of the Sokoto Jihad
Abstract
This
paper discusses the diverse views of both Eurocentric and Afrocentric scholars
on the Sokoto Jihad movement with reference to their critical assertions.
Particularly, the paper explores the fundamental developments that ascribed to
the Jihad a revolutionary status. The totality of the paper contributes to
existing knowledge by providing a common ground for the presentation and
evaluation of diverse views about the Jihad as well as stating how
revolutionary was the Jihad.
Introduction
At
the beginning of the nineteenth century, the territory of the present Nigeria
enclosed a number of independent kingdoms and states, each having its own
peculiar institutions and traditions.[1]
For instance, in the north, there were a dozen or so independent Hausa city
states, which in the first two decades of the century were transformed into a
Caliphate with its headquarters at Sokoto.[2]
The cataclysmic event that encouraged this transformation is known as the Jihad
movement. Literarily, the word Jihad means “to struggle in the way of Allah”.[3]
The movement was led by Shehu Uthman dan Fodio and it marked a crucial turning
point patently unprecedented in the history of present-day northern Nigeria.
Conceptual Clarification
If
an individual opens a modern English Dictionary, you would probably find the
definition of Jihad as “a Holy War undertaken by Muslims against
non-believers”.[4]
This definition can be regarded as poor and fallacious. The most disturbing and
alarming contention that calls for concern is that this definition is also
adopted in the academic cycle. Hence, there is need for the proper
understanding of the word.
Jihad
is an Arabic word from the root Jahada.[5]
The word “Jihad” in a purely linguistic sense means struggling or striving. The
Arabic word for war is “al-harb”.[6] In
a religious sense, as described by the Quran and teachings of the Prophet
Muhammad (SWW), Jihad has many meaning. It can refer to internal as well as
external efforts to be a good Muslim or believer, as well as working to inform
people about the faith of Islam.[7]
Jihad takes a very important status in the doctrine of Islam and its one of the
basic duties for every Muslim. At this juncture, the term Jihad should rather
be considered not merely as warfare against, but as a struggle for, as a
constructive reform movement, and not simply as the destruction of pagan
peoples.[8] In
actual fact, there is the provision of laid-down regulations and procedures in
the Sharia for inter-group relations between the believers and non-believers in
Dar-al-Islam.
Hausaland before the Jihad
There
was little cohesion among the Hausa states before the Jihad. Daura, Katsina,
Rano, Kano, Zaria, Zamfara and Gobir were all independent. They neither
recognized any of them as superior nor did they recognize any outside authority
as sovereign. Once a Sarki had been selected by the people in a city state, he
automatically became sovereign and his appointment needed no outside
confirmation.[9]
Islam
was introduced into Northern Nigeria before the Jihad of 1804. It was first
introduced to Kanem-Borno empire about 11th century while it later
spread into Hausaland from about the 14th century through the
Caravan trade routes. It was introduced by foreign malams merchants namely
Wangarawa, the Arabs and the Fulani.[10]
Balogun aptly asserts that:
The introduction
of Islam into this area is generally associated with the coming of the
Wangarawa – a group of Made Dyula Muslims merchants and clerics from Mali. The
Kano Chronicle puts the advent in Kano of the wangarawa and the introduction of
Islam in the reign of sarki Kano Yaji (1349-1385). According to this document,
the Muslim immigrants preached Islam to the Sarki who accepted and built a
Mosque. The Sarki also appointed several of the Muslim immigrants to offices
associated with the practice of Islam. These included the posts of the Imam,
the Muezzin and an official responsible for slaughtering animals.[11]
The first groups to practice the new faith were the
kings and the courtiers (the ruling elites). The religion was later patronized
by the masses.[12]
Furthermore, Al-Hajj observed that: “Islam, in one form or another, was the
dominant religion in Hausaland at the time of the Sokoto Jihad. It had existed
for at least four centuries and its diffusion must be looked upon as a
continuous process…”[13]
According to Hunwick, the Muslims in Hausaland fell
into two categories: those based primarily in the towns and those based outside
the main centres who were largely Hausa or settled part- Hausa/Fulani.[14]
They were closely bound to the obligations of their settled society and had,
through these circumstances, come to accommodate a great deal of non-Islamic
practices into their expression of Islam, for it was clearly in their better
interests to keep the favour of their rulers.[15] The
latter, who were largely Fulani and Tuaregs, lived a life independent of the
towns, and particularly in the case of most Fulani, divorced of the pagan
culture of their kin, they depended on Islam for their values, ambitions and
their sense of security.[16]
At this point, it is worthy to note that the Jihad
has been viewed in diverse ways by many personalities. Such views include a
religious reform, ethnic nationalism or racial movement and lastly a
revolution. These views are central to this paper and shall thus occupy our
subsequent discuss.
Interpretations
of the Sokoto Jihad
The fact that the Jihad has been seen as religious
reform movement cannot be overemphasized. Scholars such as Murray Last, Al-Hajj,
David Robinson, and Akin Olorunfemi among others have expressed their views on
the Jihad as basically a reform of religion and other aspects of the society. In
view of this, Al-Hajj raised three fundamental questions that could help
understand the Jihad within the purview of Islamic reform movement. These
questions include: what were the specific socio-economic conditions which gave
rise to it?; In what respects did it conform with, or differ from, other
similar movements in other parts of the Muslim worlds?; and what fundamental
issues pre-occupied the minds of the leaders in the course of the religious
struggle and the formation of the caliphate?. [17]
Robinson in his own view reports that in the main
historiography of West African islamization, reforms movements go back only 300
years. He went further to assert that they were directed not at imperial
European frame works but practices of “mixed religion” which combined Islam
with local traditions in all sort of ways.[18]
Last simply expressed his own view in the concluding
remarks of his work titled the Sokoto Caliphate when he noted that “… clearly,
the reforms did not cover all the community; music and gambling for example
continued despite disapproval…”[19]
The level of acceptance of Islam in the pre-Jihad
Hausaland should illuminate the social milieu in which the Jihad was ignited.
In this respect, Al-Hajj asserts that:
We can state
with some confidence, however, that at the time of the outbreak of the Jihad
the great majority of the inhabitants of Hausaland professed Islam and that the
governmental institutions were basically Islamic. The Sokoto Jihad, therefore,
must be conceived as a reform movement within a Muslim community and not as
warfare between Muslims and Pagans.[20]
According to Uthman dan Fodiyo and his adherents,
the Jihad was primarily a reform movement calculated to reactivate Islam by
destroying syncretism and heresies such as sacrifices and belief in spirits
among the Hausa ruling class, commoners and other ethnic Muslims in Gobir and
elsewhere in Central Sudan.[21]
For instance, the Shehu was critical of the excessive claims of religious
charlatans who posed as sufi shaykhs. Such
people were normally minor mallams who made a living by divination and
prophesy. Many of them claimed that they possessed the power of Kashf (mystical unveiling) and thus
duped the common people.[22] More
so, the Muslims objected to having to fight in non-Muslims armies against
brother Muslims; they hated the practice of selling Muslims into slavery, hence,
this formed the basis of the Jihad leaders’ charge of a return to the true
dictates of Islamic faith both in practice and in the administration of the
society.
In the same vein, it has been argued that the desire
to reform the political and economic aspects of Hausaland must have
overshadowed the religious reform. Yusufu Abba reported that Bello’s analysis
of Shehu’s followers which fell into ten categories, only one followed and
supported Shehu for religious revival but the majority did for diverse
political, economic, social and personal reasons.[23]
Political and economic reforms were said to be imminent owing to the nature of
oppressive rule and political corruption that pervaded the courts and domains
of the Habe rulers as well as excessive taxes imposed on the people that were
in sharp deviance of the Islamic laws known as the Sharia. The Muslim community opposed the luxury and sinfulness of
court life; treatment meted out to commoners; bribery and corruption in
appointments to office; heavy market taxes; erratic cattle tax – Jingali and the commandeering of cattle
and food stuffs for the royal households as well as the hereditary succession
to the throne. [24]
The scholars that share this view point therefore
argued that reform was preached, and attracted not only Muslims but also
traditionalists ready to support reform even if they did not like the Muslim
religion.
Another crucial interpretation ascribed to the Jihad
movement in Sokoto can be found in its description as purely an ethnic or
racial struggle, “The Jihad continued to be labeled ethnically as the Fulani
Jihad and the Muslim state which came as a result of it continues to be
described secularly as an empire”.[25]
Attempts have been made to explain the Sokoto Jihad
as primarily warfare by the Fulani against their Hausa Overlords. This view was
reportedly popular among the colonial administrators such as Lord Lugard,
Eurocentric writer like S.J. Hogben, travelers and anthropologist like Arnett,
E.J, Johnston, H.A.R and H. Barth. Particularly, Barth was said to have
reported that the Fulani people were a special and superior race and that they
waged the Jihad. He further added a note of caution that any European country
or people that happen to control this region must control and thoroughly
dominate this group.[26]
On the part of the colonialist, Lugard at least in the initial stages of the
British conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate made a great play with the theory of
the Hausa-Fulani dichotomy in order to justify his policies. Al-Hajj recorded
that Lugard had in a dispatch to the Colonial Office in January, 1903 wrote:
The Fulani race
are aliens to the country, whose population they have oppressed. Their power
has become effete, and their rule has degenerated in most places tyranny. They
themselves recognize that the day is past. Already in 1900, the process of
disintegration had begun. In every direction, the people subject to them were
rellion, or had thrown off their yoke… My policy has been to retain the Fulani
as ruling caste, but to transfer to transfer to the Government the suzerainty,
which they claimed by right of conquest, involving, as it does, the ultimate
right to the land and minerals of Nigeria. These rights, vested in alien
conquerors, pass in turn to the new suzerain. That suzerainty, however, cannot
be complete, and will not be universally recognized, until it has been
established in Sokoto, Katsina and Kano.[27]
However, the large-scale armed resistance
by all the races that inhabited the Caliphate and mass migration which
accompanied the British occupation of Kano and Sokoto proved the fallacy of the
above statement. This is vivid in the inference that had the Hausa people and
other tribes discontented with the administration of the Caliphate, vast
majority of them would have welcomed the British with open arms but reverse was
the case in the face of available evidence.
The Jihad was also seen by Hogben
as originally a national fight of Fulani, both Muslims and pagans, against the
forces of Yunfa, the king of Gobir who had decreed their extermination. He went
further to opine that the flag bearers who emerged as rulers or Emirs after the
war were known Fulani supporters of Shehu.[28]
But the charge of Fulani imperialism becomes very weak given the composition of
the Jihad armies and the prevailing conditions under which the struggles were
fought. It is known, for instance, that the Shehu’s supporters and armies
consisted of various elements; Hausa, Fulani and the Tuaregs. Webster and
Boahen noted that “It was not merely Muslim Fulani against traditionalist
Hausa; some Muslims, Fulani and Hausa were loyal to Yunfa while some Fulani and
Hausa traditionalist sympathized with dan Fodio”.[29]
Last also corroborate this point when he affirmed that “Both armies were mixed
racially; the Gobirawa certainly had some Tuareg and Sullebawa, and probably
other Fulani than those who had deserted”. [30]
Some other opinions of Africa
descent in general and Western Sudan in particular also ascribed to the cause
of the Jihad, the desire for the expression of Fulani nationalism, or as a
class war between the Hausa-Fulani commoners, the talakawa, and their Habe
rulers. According to Olorunfemi, ethnic nationalism relied heavily on the
accusations levied against the Jihad leaders by El-Kanemi of Borno who, though
he admitted the charges of paganism brought against the Habe rulers, denied
that such charges were grave enough to justify a Jihad.[31]
In spite of his victories against the Jihadists, he intensified efforts to
strengthen his position by carrying out religious and social reforms, such as
removing injustice in the law courts and making the government more efficient.
Hence relative peace was attained in Borno. This point was further clarified by
Webster and Boahen: “… this put Bello, in Sokoto, in the embarrassing position
of fighting against a reformed Muslim state, for El-Kanemi’s reforms had
removed the excuse for a holy war against Borno”.[32]
The extent at which the Jihad was interpreted
as revolutionary can be best appreciated and understood with the examination of
the meaning of revolution. Simply put, revolution can be said to be an
overthrow of a ruler of political system; or a dramatic change in ideas or
practice.[33]
The Jihad has been described as
revolutionary in all facets of its ideology, leadership and aftermaths by
scholars such as Abdullahi Smith, Al-Hajj, J.B. Webster, A.A. Boahen, Yusufu
Abba, and Y.B. Usman among others. Smith aptly sums his view about the Jihad as
“The Sokoto Jihad should be viewed as an intellectual movement, involving in
the minds of the leaders a conception of the ideal society and philosophy of
revolution”. He further asserts that the significance of the movement “cannot
be understood unless emphasis is laid on this aspect”.[34]
At this juncture, the level at
which the Jihad was revolutionary shall be discussed in tandem with its
aftermaths in Hausaland and the whole of Western Sudan.
First, The Jihad gave Hausaland the
first semblance of political unity. As noted earlier, before the Jihad there
was little cohesion among the Hausa states. It was the Jihad that united the
Hausa States. The title of the kings also changed to ‘Emirs’. With the demise
of the various political entities that constituted the Hausa states, there
emerged a vast empire known as the Sokoto caliphate, the largest political unit
in the nineteenth century West Africa, made up of fifteen major emirates spread
over 466, 000 square kilometers, which required four months to cross from east
to west and two months from north to south.[35]
The boundaries of the caliphate and Borno included were rather more than the
boundaries of the present-day northern Nigeria.[36]
The Sultan of Sokoto became first, the spiritual and later political head of
the newly created political edifice. Abba shed more light on this point when he
asserts that:
In Hausaland the
collapse of the states after 1804 and the emergence of a ‘federal’ system in
the form of the Sokoto Caliphate a new order based on written laws and moral
codes with a state religion and its vast and radical transformation of
institutions and social relationships…[37]
It is worth noting that, the Jihad
resulted in the revival of Islam in Hausaland and a great expansion of Islam
among the non-Hausaland components of the caliphate. Webster and Boahen noted
that “… while they were the centre of the Caliphate, there were also a number
of non-Hausa in it, such as the people of Adamawa, the Nupe, Gwari and the
Ilorin Yoruba”.[38]
Islam spread to several of these mentioned societies who had little or no
experience of Islam before the Jihad. The spread went hand in hand with greater
expansion of education and literacy. The Arabic language became the lingua
franca and Islamic laws and ways of life were generally accepted. For instance,
Bello encouraged education as a key to efficient administration as well as
conversion to Islam.[39]
He also encouraged the better education of the mallams and he himself provided
hospitality for scholars at his court, so that Sokoto became a widely respected
centre of education and enlightenment.[40]
More so, Shehu Uthman dan Fodio, Abdullah, Bello and later Nana Asma’u were
said to have produced more than 200 known works, so much that it encouraged the
emergence of great libraries at Sokoto and Segu.[41]
Another revolutionary aspect of the
Jihad was the place and importance of the Sharia in the Caliphate. The Sharia
had been operating before the Jihad but in different way, in that it only
concerned adjudicative and arbitrative problems, carried out by the Ulama in
village, town and court on individual and personal basis.[42]
The advent of the Jihad saw a drastic transformation in the sense that trade,
work, education, bureaucracy and inter-group relations were now within the
concrete framework of the Sharia.[43]
The new Emirates and Caliphal bureaucracies were based on specific laws, duties
and public accountability; hence a systematized and rationalized public role,
radically different from the unsystematized title system of the pre-Jihad
states. The Sharia was applied to inter-group relation in order to assure
general peace and inter-community co-operation. Y.B. Usman pointed out that “in
the Sokoto Caliphate, the only basis for full citizenship, in all the emirates,
was to be a Muslim, without any regard for descent, tribe and race”.[44]
He went further by stating that rights in the middle of the Jihad campaigns, in
1806 was emphasized by Shehu Uthman dan Fodio in his work titled the Bayan
Wujub al Hijra. Here Shehu warned that “one of the swiftest ways of destroying
a kingdom is to give preference of one particular tribe over another, or show
favour to one group of people rather than another…”[45]
It is however crucial to note that Dhima, protection and peace between Muslim
and non-Muslim communities, and Jizya, protection for aliens living in Muslim
communities were instituted.[46]
In the realm of leadership
selection, a major constitutional innovation was witnessed in the method of
selecting the ruler. A new ruler to have his legitimacy confirmed received
bay’a from the electors and members of the public; this paying of allegiance is
a practical demonstration to the ruler of his duties to the people and of their
right to sanction his policies or even his rule later.[47]
Urbanization was another
revolutionary achievement of the Jihad. Urbanization had of course a long
history in Hausaland and in the 19th century not only were villages
converted to towns but new towns were founded as centres of government,
industry and trade.[48]
Many towns were also founded in Emirates outside Hausaland by personal efforts
of Emirs and their officials, e.g, Yola, Bauchi, Bida, Gombe-Abba, Kontagora,
Keffi, Nasarawa, etc. Town life by drawing more people together, broadening
their outlooks and involving them into more and newer economic and social
activities built a bigger territorial community in terms of functional interdependence
and social integration.[49]
Economically, the success of the
Jihad brought a great deal of prosperity because of the establishment of peace
and order. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Sokoto caliphate was probably the
most prosperous area of the Sudan.[50]
Prosperity was built upon a thriving agriculture. Major cash crops included
cotton, indigo and tobacco. Cotton and indigo provided the raw materials for
the Caliphate’s major industry, the manufacture of cloth. The four most
important manufacturing towns were Kano, Bida, Argungu and Ilorin.[51]
Cloth was woven, dyed and embroidered in Kano for sale all over the Sudan and
Sahara. Bida, Argungu and Ilorin manufactured cloth quite distinct from that of
Kano. While Kano specialized in embroidery, Bida and Ilorin produced most
attractive woven designs. In addition, European cloth was also imported, dyed
and embroidered to make it acceptable to African taste.[52]
Another major industry was the
smithing of silver, brass and iron. Kano was again the major centre
specializing in agricultural implements, weapons, bits and stirrups, and ladies
ornaments. Bida also possessed guilds of brass and silver smiths noted for the
quality of their designs and workmanship. This settlement was unique in the
Central Sudan for its guild of glass-workers who produced bangles and beads
which found a ready market.[53]
Sokoto was first and foremost a centre of learning, but it also produced and
exported, particularly to Kano, the best quality iron to be found in the
caliphate. Sokoto was also notable for its tanners and leather-workers, who
produced leather known in Europe as ‘Morocco’ because it was obtained from that
country. Almost every ethnic group had distinct pottery style, but the people
most famous for their pottery were the non-Hausa along the Niger-Benue,
especially the Gwari and the small ethnic groups in Abuja, Keffi, Nassarawa and
Jema’a.[54]In
terms of value, the cattle trade was probably the most lucrative for supplying
the domestic demand for meat, milk and hides. A brisk trade in gold and kola
nuts came into Kano from Asante and Kola was also very profitable.[55]
In all, among the major economic
changes in the nineteenth century were the growth of markets and free
enterprise which were complemented by policy and laws fixing prices, weights
and measures; and centralization of trade and commerce in Kano, which became
the undisputed commercial and financial capital of the caliphate. Its industry,
the stability of its currency and the fact that the trans-Saharan routes
gradually shifted from the Borno to Kano, were important in the city’s growing
commercial dominance.[56]
Conclusion
At this point, it is pertinent to
note that in outlining the revolutionary achievements of the Jihad, there is
the possibility of concentrating on the positive changes brought about because
it is clear that up to 1903 when the internal development of the Caliphal
polity and society were interrupted by the British colonial conquest there was
little retrogression or dysfunction in the new institutional and structural
arrangements.[57]
By and large, this paper has
succeeded in examining the views of scholars, travelers, anthropologists, and
colonizers on the Sokoto Jihad as a religious reform movement, racial movement
and as a revolutionary movement. Therefore, the fact that should be established
is that the Jihad or military struggle drastically affected the political,
social and economic ways of life of the people of Hausaland and present-day
northern Nigeria. Hence, it is not out of context to align with the
pro-evolutionary theorists owing to the vivid Jihad’s revolutionary nature in
ideology, organization in the pre and post Jihad years, intellectual and
balanced appraisal.
ENDNOTES
[1]. F.K. Buah, West Africa since A.D. 1000, London,
Macmillan, 1985, p. 113.
[2]. A. Afe,
“Political Changes in the Nineteenth Century”, in S.O. Arifalo and G. Ajayi
(eds),
Essays
in Contemporary Nigerian History, Lagos, First Academic Publisher, 2003, p.
22.
[4]. Lucinda
Conventry and Martin Nixon, The Oxford
English Dictionary, (Fifth Edition), Oxford,
University Press, 1999, p.
[7]. Ibid.
[8]. M. Last,
“Reform in West Africa: the Jihad movements of the nineteenth century”, in J.
F. A. Ajayi and M. Crowder (eds), History of West Africa, (Vol 2), London, Longman Group Ltd., 1974, p.1
[9]. A. Afe, Op. cit., p. 23
[10]. Ibid.
[11]. S.A. Balogun,
“History of Islam up to 1800”, in Obaro Ikime(ed.), Groundwork of Nigerian
History, Ibadan, Heinemann Educational
Books, 1980, p. 213.
[12]. A. Afe, Op. cit.
[13]. M.A. Al-Hajj,
“The meaning of the Sokoto Jihad”, in Y.B. Usman (ed.), Studies in the History
of the Sokoto Caliphate, Zaria, Dept.
of History, ABU, 1979, Pp. 6-7.
[14]. J.O. Hunwick,
“The Nineteenth Century Jihads”, in Joseph C. Anene and Godfrey Brown
(eds), Africa
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Ibadan, University Press, 1966,
p.
294.
[15]. Ibid.
[16]. Ibid.
[17]. M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. Cit., p. 1.
[18]. David
Robinson, The “Islamic revolutions” of
West Africa on the frontiers of Islamic world,
February 2008, (Virtual Library).
[19]. Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate, London, Longmans
Green and Co., 1967, p. 234.
[20] M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. Cit., p. 7.
[21]. A. Afe, Op. cit., p. 24.
[22]. M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. cit., p. 8.
[23]. Yusufu Abba,
“The 1804 Jihad in Hausaland as a revolution” in Y.B. Usman (ed.), Studies in
the History of the Sokoto Caliphate, Zaria, Dept.
of History, ABU, 1979, Pp. 22-23.
[24]. A. Afe, Op. cit., p. 26.
[25]. M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. cit., p. 5.
[26]. Yusufu Abba, Op. cit., p. 25.
[27] M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. cit., p. 4.
[28]. Ibid.
[29]. J.B. Webster,
A.A. Boahen and M. Tidy, The Growth of
African Civilization: The
Revolutionary Years West Africa since 1800, London,
Longman, 1980, p. 5.
[30]. Murray Last, Op. cit., p. 27.
[31]. A. Afe, Op. cit. Pp. 24-25.
[32]. J.B. Webster
et al., Op. cit. p. 9.
[33]. Microsoft
Encarta Dictionaries.
[34]. M.A. Al-Hajj, Op. cit., p. 6.
[35]. J.B. Webster
et al., Op. cit. p. 13.
[36]. Ibid.
[37]. Yusufu Abba, Op. cit., P. 13.
[38]. J.B. Webster
et al., Op. cit. p. 13.
[39]. Ibid.
[40]. Ibid.
[41]. Ibid.
[42]. Yusufu Abba, Op. cit. p. 23.
[43]. Ibid.
[44]. Y. B. Usman, “The
Sokoto Caliphate and Nation-Building”, Speech at the opening ceremony
of the International Conference on the
Sokoto Caliphate and its lagacies, Abuja, Monday, 14th
June, 2004.
[45]. Ibid.
[46]. Yusufu Abba, Op. cit., p. 23.
[47]. Ibid.
[48]. Ibid.
[49]. Ibid.
[50]. J.B. Webster
et al., Op. cit., p.12.
[51]. Ibid.
[52]. Ibid.
[53]. Ibid.
[54]. Ibid.
[55]. Ibid.
[56]. Ibid.
[57] Yusufu Abba, Op. cit. p. 24.
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