Usman dan Fodio

born December 1754, Maratta, Gobir, Hausaland

died 1817, Sokoto, Fulani empire

Fulani mystic, philosopher, and revolutionary reformer.

In a jihad (holy war) between 1804 and 1808, he created a new Muslim state, the Fulani empire, in what is now northern Nigeria. He stimulated the growth of Islam throughout the region and founded the important Sokoto caliphate. He also produced a large body of writings in Arabic and Fula that continue to enjoy wide circulation and influence.

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▪ Fulani leader

Introduction

Usman also spelled  Uthman  or  Usuman,  Arabic  ʿUthmān Ibn Fūdī 

born December 1754, Maratta, Gobir, Hausaland [now in Nigeria]

died 1817, Sokoto, Fulani empire

      Fulani mystic, philosopher, and revolutionary reformer who, in a jihad (holy war) between 1804 and 1808, created a new Muslim (Islāmic world) state, the Fulani empire, in what is now northern Nigeria.

Early years

      Usman was born in the Hausa state of Gobir, in what is now northwestern Nigeria. His father, Muhammad Fodiye, was a scholar from the Toronkawa clan, which had emigrated from Futa-Toro in Senegal about the 15th century. While he was still young, Usman moved south with his family to Degel, where he studied the Qurʾān with his father. Subsequently he moved on to other scholar relatives, traveling from teacher to teacher in the traditional way and reading extensively in the Islamic sciences. One powerful intellectual and religious influence at this time was his teacher in the southern Saharan city of Agadez, Jibrīl ibn ʿUmar, a radical figure whom Usman both respected and criticized and by whom he was admitted to the Qādirī and other Ṣūfī orders.

      About 1774–75 Usman began his active life as a teacher, and for the next 12 years he combined study with peripatetic teaching and preaching in Kebbi and Gobir, followed by a further five years in Zamfara. During this latter period, though committed in principle to avoiding the courts of kings, he visited Bawa, the sultan of Gobir, from whom he won important concessions for the local Muslim community (including his own freedom to propagate Islam); he also appears to have taught the future sultan Yunfa.

Growing leadership

      Throughout the 1780s and '90s Usman's reputation increased, as did the size and importance of the community that looked to him for religious and political leadership. Particularly closely associated with him were his younger brother, Abdullahi, who was one of his first pupils, and his son, Muhammad Bello, both distinguished teachers and writers. But his own scholarly clan was slow to come over to him. Significant support appears to have come from the Hausa peasantry. Their economic and social grievances and experience of oppression under the existing dynasties stimulated millenarian hopes and led them to identify him with the Mahdī (“Divinely Guided One”), a legendary Muslim redeemer whose appearance was expected at that time. Although he rejected this identification, he did share and encourage their expectations.

      During the 1790s, when Usman seems to have lived continuously at Degel, a division developed between his substantial community and the Gobir ruling dynasty. About 1797–98 Sultan Nafata, who was aware that Usman had permitted his community to be armed and who no doubt feared that it was acquiring the characteristics of a state within the state, reversed the liberal policy he had adopted toward him 10 years earlier and issued his historic proclamation forbidding any but the Shaykh, as Usman had come to be called, to preach, forbidding the conversion of sons from the religion of their fathers, and proscribing the use of turbans and veils.

      In 1802 Yunfa succeeded Nafata as sultan, but, whatever his previous ties with the Shaykh may have been, he did not improve the status of Usman's community. The breakdown, when it eventually occurred, turned on a confused incident in which some of the Shaykh's supporters forcibly freed Muslim prisoners taken by a Gobir military expedition. Usman, who seems to have wished to avoid a final breach, nevertheless agreed that Degel was threatened. Like the Prophet Muhammad, whose biography he frequently noted as having close parallels with his own, the Shaykh carried out a Hijrah (migration) to Gudu, 30 miles (48 km) to the northwest, in February 1804. Despite his own apparent reluctance, he was elected imam (leader) of the community, and the new caliphate was formally established.

The jihad

      During the next five years the Shaykh's primary interests were necessarily the conduct of the jihad and the organization of the caliphate. He did not himself take part in military expeditions, but he appointed commanders, encouraged the army, handled diplomatic questions, and wrote widely on problems relating to the jihad and its theoretical justification. On this his basic position was clear and rigorous: the sultan of Gobir had attacked the Muslims; therefore he was an unbeliever and as such must be fought; and anyone helping an unbeliever was also an unbeliever. (This last proposition was later used to justify the conflict with Bornu.)

      As regards the structure of the caliphate, the Shaykh attempted to establish an essentially simple, nonexploitative system. His views are stated in his important treatise Bayān wujūb al-hijra (November 1806) and elsewhere: the central bureaucracy should be limited to a loyal and honest vizier, judges, a chief of police, and a collector of taxes; and local administration should be in the hands of governors (emirs) selected from the scholarly class for their learning, piety, integrity, and sense of justice.

      Initially the military situation was far from favourable. Food supplies were a continuing problem; the requisitioning of local food antagonized the peasantry; increasing dependence on the great Fulani clan leaders, who alone could put substantial forces into the field, alienated the non-Fulani. At the Battle of Tsuntua in December 1804, the Shaykh's forces suffered a major defeat and were said to have lost 2,000 men, of whom 200 knew the Qurʾān by heart. But, after a successful campaign against Kebbi in the spring of 1805, they established a permanent base at Gwandu in the west. By 1805–06 the Shaykh's caliphal authority was recognized by leaders of the Muslim communities in Katsina, Kano, Daura, and Zamfara. When Alkalawa, the Gobir capital, finally fell at the fourth assault on October 1808, the main military objectives of the jihad had been achieved.

Later life

      Although the jihad had succeeded, Usman believed the original objectives of the reforming movement had been largely forgotten. This no doubt encouraged his withdrawal into private life. In 1809–10 Bello moved to Sokoto, making it his headquarters, and built a home for his father nearby at Sifawa, where he lived in his customary simple style, surrounded by 300 students. In 1812 the administration of the caliphate was reorganized, the Shaykh's two principal viziers, Abdullahi and Bello, taking responsibility for the western and eastern sectors, respectively. The Shaykh, though remaining formally caliph, was thus left free to return to his main preoccupations, teaching and writing.

      His five years at Sifawa were a productive period, to judge from the number of dated works that survive, most of them dealing with the practical problems of the community, including the series of books addressed to “the Brethren” (al-Ikhwān), arising out of the dispute with Bornu and its principal administrator and ideologist, Muḥammad al-Kanemi. At his weekly meetings on Thursday nights, he criticized aspects of the post-jihad caliphate (as indeed did Abdullahi and Bello), especially the tendency of the new bureaucracy and its hangers-on to become another oppressive ruling class. Around 1815 he moved to Sokoto, when Bello built him a house in the western suburbs, and where he died, aged 62, in 1817.

Assessment

      Usman was the most important reforming leader of the western Sudan region in the early 19th century. His importance lies partly in the new stimulus that he, as a mujaddid, or renewer of the faith, gave to Islam throughout the region; and partly in his work as a teacher and intellectual. In the latter roles he was the focus of a network of students and the author of a large corpus of writings in Arabic and Fulani that covered most of the Islamic sciences and enjoyed—and still enjoy—wide circulation and influence. Lastly, Usman's importance lies in his activities as founder of a jamāʿa, or Islamic community, the Sokoto caliphate, which brought the Hausa states and some neighbouring territories under a single central administration for the first time in history.

Thomas Hodgkin

Additional Reading

The best modern work is Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate (1967), which contains a useful bibliography of the main writings of Usman and Abdullahi dan Fodio, Muḥammad Bello, and others. Ismail A.B. Balogun, The Life and Works of Uthmān dan Fodio (1975), is a study of Usman as an Islāmic reformer with focus on his works.

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