Introduction

Every government that has ever existed has dealt with many issues that have put its ability to maintain a centralized government in question. The issues that a government has the potential to deal with can be categorized under politics and class. Issues that a government may face under politics can range from warfare, whether it be civil or interstate, party-wise, the splitting of a government through two or more groups with different opinions, and even centralization, the splitting of land into different provinces, counties, or estates that all answer to one power. The issues that a government might manage under class can incorporate multiple different issues. These can range from disparities and tensions between the lower and upper classes and how different sub-communities interact with each other. An example of this can be seen in how men are treated in comparison to women, how different religious groups are treated and represented, and how slaves or servants are treated in comparison to free people and recognized citizens. Furthermore, economics plays a role in both politics and classes as a governmental structure must be able to dedicate funds to military equipment, trade, taxes, reparations, and infrastructure. Economics could also go towards community projects and funding. Overall, there are a multitude of factors that a government must take into consideration when ensuring that it is stable and sustainable. The Sokoto Caliphate proved no exception to these conditions.

A caliphate can be defined as an empire or kingdom that is ruled by an Islamic or Muslim ruler. The Sokoto Caliphate was a nation that hailed in the North-western Hausaland, what is now modern-day Nigeria, throughout the 19^th and into the early 20^th centuries. The Sokoto Caliphate was founded in 1809 by Usman dan Fodio after the Fulani Wars. The Fulani Wars were a series of battles between 1804 and 1808 between Usman dan Fodio and the Hausa Kingdoms. After its official establishment, the Caliphate would work towards the establishment of Dar al-Islam1. It was under this ideal that the Saikh would grow his community. To ensure that the Muslim community would thrive within the new Caliphate, the Saikh would go against many cultural traditions. Examples of the changes he would make would be distinguishing who was Muslim and who was not. He did this by freeing the Fulani slaves, which he had noticed most of them were Muslim, telling much of the community who had non-Muslim parents to practice their parents' religion, as well as restricting who was able to wear a turban and who was not2. Furthermore, Saikh would make it a point to return to practicing traditional Islam. It would be through these actions that the Sokoto Caliphate would manage the first of the cultural and political issues that every government is likely to go through. After these implementations, the community Saikh had been working to build up would grow exponentially as small neighborhoods began to develop.

It would be after these developments that the Sokoto Caliphate would grow and manage other, more pressing matters. First, the caliphate would turn its attention towards the securing of religion and territory by putting heavy emphasis on the Jihad through war with the Gobir. The Saikh people would go on to conduct multiple skirmishes and battles that would eventually land them in Gudu. Upon their final settlement, the Sokoto Caliphate would manage more foundational matters, like government officials and finances, under the rule of Muhammad Bello and Abu Bakr Atiku, and Abu Bakr Ali. Sultans3 Ahmad b. Atiku, Umar b. Ali, Abd al-Rahman, and Muhammad Attahiru would oversee militarism and the securing of territories. Overall, the Sokoto Caliphate would undergo a multitude of changes that would challenge its militaristic, political, and cultural standings which would all affect its social standing.

Methodology

I had gotten into history by learning about the multiple battles that have occurred over time with the Medieval Era, specifically the 11^th to 13^th centuries being my favorite. It was with this in mind that I initially wanted to put my studies of African history into this period. However, this made it especially hard to find resources on the continent, as Africa is not a heavily documented place, especially before the modern era. Therefore, I decided to focus purely on warfare in Africa and let that be the leading factor in my research. Before diving too deeply into African warfare, I first needed to choose a region. It was at this point in my research that the course I was in had just gotten done going over Sundiata and the creation of the empire of Mali, which is in West Africa. Therefore, I wanted to move away from West Africa as a research point. In my search for warfare in different regions, I found myself looking into the first Italo-Ethiopian War in East Africa, the Nigerian Civil War in West Africa, and as a fail-safe, the Battle of Kirina that founded Mali in West Africa. After looking into all these options, I landed on the Nigerian Civil Wars. However, the problem with this was that the Nigerian Civil War was about a century out of scope, beginning in 1967, and the farthest the course would investigate would be about 1870. Therefore, wanting to keep my research focused on Nigerian history, I settled for the Fulani Wars in Nigeria.

In previous experiences writing about war, I had gathered the knowledge from a previous course that connecting warfare to either politics, the environment, or science can prove helpful in getting a deeper understanding of how that society came to be as you get to examine the causes and effects on a society from multiple different areas. Therefore, I decided that I wanted to connect the Fulani Wars to the Sokoto Caliphate’s political structure, its economics, and its social constructs. It is here that I developed my research question: How did West African military culture contribute to the evolution of the Sokoto Caliphate?

With the research question decided and the angles that I wanted to look at put into place, I wanted to find an even number of sources that would each provide an in-depth understanding of the developments of the Sokoto Empire. I went about this research by initially gathering ten resources. The first resource would be a general understanding and overview of the history of the Sokoto Caliphate, while the remaining nine sources would be split up into three pairs geared toward war and politics, three sources geared towards gender and social structures, while the last three would be geared towards slavery, trade, and the economy.

The first resource I found would be The Sokoto Caliphate by Murray Last. This document I found within the ZSR library. I included it because it provides an overall history and focuses on multiple aspects of the Sokoto Caliphate in chronological order. The next three sources I found would be focused on warfare. The first of the three would be Joseph P. Smaldone’s Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. I also found this source by scouring the ZSR library. This document not only looks at warfare but tries to directly tie in back to the caliphate’s sociology which relates to one of the many angles that I wanted to examine the sultanate. The next document would be Conrad Cairns’ The African Knights: the Armies of Sokoto, Bornu, and Bagirmi in the Nineteenth Century. I also found this document in the ZSR library, and it focuses strictly on warfare. To be more exact, the book discusses various aspects of the Sokoto army ranging from the soldiers themselves to the practices that were developed. I chose it because despite its strict focus on military tactics, I felt I could connect it to the caliphate’s religious structure. The final resource on war I could get my hand on was Stephanie Zehnle’s A Geography of Jihad: Sokoto Jihadism and the Islamic Frontier in West Africa. It was this resource that I found using an online resource called WorldCat. I chose this because it ties together the religious, social, and political aspects of the Sokoto caliphate by examining the Jihad Movement.

The next three resources I found focused on women and the caliphate’s social structure. The first of the three was Emmanuel Akyeampong and Focak Hippolyte’s The Contribution of African Women to Economic Growth and Development in the Pre-Colonial and Colonial Periods: Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications. I found this source on the Taylor and Francis Online Database. It focuses on how the increase in colonial expansion would have altered different gender traditions and the use of slavery. However, because it is so broad, it did not make the final cut. The next source I found was Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd’s One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe. I found this in the ZSR library and since it focuses on Nana, who was a scholar scribe during the period, the book touches on the relationship between religion and gender. The final source I found was Mary Wren Bivins’ Telling Stories, Making Histories: Women, Words, and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland and the Sokoto Caliphate. I found this source in the ZSR library, and it discusses how the Fulani Wars impacted religion and gender roles. Though these sources were all I intended to find, I received a fourth resource from my instructor named The Caliph’s Sister by Jean Boyd that discussed similar themes to that of Telling Stories, Making Histories, which I found helpful.

Finally, the last three sources I found focus on slavery and economics. The first of the three was Mohammed Bashir Salau’s Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study. I found this source within the ProQuest databases, and it compares slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate to other forms of slavery at the time. I chose the source because the comparisons would help draw a better overall picture of how different social factors contributed to slavery. Next, I found Sean Arnold Stilwell’s Paradoxes of Power: the Kano “Mamluks” and Male Royal Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1804-1903 in the ZSR library. This source ties the knots on how slavery impacted the sociology and politics of the caliphate. The last source I found would be Amanke Okafor and Paul Robeson’s Nigeria Why We Fight for Freedom in the Gale Primary Sources database. This source discusses the multiple aspects of the Nigerian lower class during the period including slavery and women, which ties together the two topics in a way that I thought would help my research.

Curated Collection

As stated earlier, the goal of my research was to answer how warfare impacted and influenced the militaristic, social, and economic structurization of the Sokoto Caliphate. When deciding which of the 11 sources I had gathered would be the most beneficial to answering my question, my overall criteria was whether the document could successfully connect how and why the certain construction came to be, this was primarily effective when examining the reasons the caliphate’s military was formed the way it was, as well as the effects those constructions had on the overall success or hindrance of the caliphate overtime, this criteria became more effective when looking into how social class, gender, and slavery impacted the caliphates sociology and economics through its reign. With these criteria in mind, I managed to dwindle my selection from 11 sources to six. The sources that were more focused on the militarization of the Sokoto Caliphate come together with the common theme that the militarization of the caliphate was the result of a religious-focused movement. The documents that focused on the gender and class structurization of the Sokoto Caliphate came together with the common theme that women within the caliphate took a religious role and were often seen as religious leaders both before and after the caliphate’s development. Finally, the sources that were focused more on slavery and economics tied together with the theme that slavery was beneficial for the economics of the Sokoto Caliphate, however, it put excessive amounts of stress on not only the slaves, which is expected, but also on landowners and politicians due to the violent nature of the entire system.

Smaldone, Joseph P. Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

The Sudanic environment consisted of hot deserts and tropical grasslands. The environment was full of hills that surrounded very flat plains. With these diverse climates, there are dry and wet seasons, and it was during the dry seasons that war and slave raiding would break out. Many different battle tactics would be put into place before the official establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate like the use of calvary and long-range weapons. Before the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphates were the Hausa States. These states were in a state of war that would eventually be united under Islam with the cumulation of the jihad. Following the unification of the Hausa States came the Almoravid Movement. It would be through the messages and teachings that this movement brought that the eventual founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, Usman dan Fodio, would find his bearings. It would be through this cultural and religious movement that the Fulani, as well as other groups, would be dispersed in the different territories that used to be the Hausa States. With the many diverse groups that made up the united states, many sultans before Fodio made efforts to make the sultanate a place where Muslims could practice freely and out in the open and would enforce registration that would prohibit non-Muslims from practicing Islam or sharing any of its teachings. It would be these sultans, including Fodio, that would make efforts to prepare the community for an “internal war.” As reforms began to be put in place, many different non-Muslim communities began to retaliate against Muslims which would result in many coerced migrations, or hijras. As war began to break out, there were a total of five factors that would result in the jihad. These would range from the weakening state of Golbir, one of the Hausa kingdoms constantly at war, the dispersion of Muslims throughout the states that would allow for the placement of Muslim leaders in different areas, the Muslims' higher intellectual knowledge that allowed them to make more favorable treaties, the increase in civil violence throughout the Fulani communities, and the support of Islamic scholars that the tension attracted. Overall, the tension between the multiple Hausa States and the communities in them, including the Fulani, resulted in the purposeful planning of the jihad, which was a militaristic movement by Muslim leaders to create and promote a safe place for Islam to be harbored and practiced.

Zehnle Stephanie. 2020. A Geography of Jihad: Sokoto Jihadism and the Islamic Frontier in West Africa (version Erstausgabe) Erstausgabe ed. Berlin: De Gruyter.

The Jihad was a militaristic movement by the Sultans of the Sokoto Caliphate to create a safe spot the Muslims could practice Islam in peace and out in the open. The focus of this test was to bring to light how the Islamic scholars of the 19^th century mapped the world to accommodate for and create a space where there could be a “Land of Islam” and a “Land of War” that was separate from it. During the Sokoto caliphate, Jihadist scholars created maps that had the Sokoto Caliphate at the center of the world, with it being surrounded by the ocean. With the clear want to have the Muslim world separated from any other nations Hausa States and the Sokoto Caliphate are often described as “civilization,” while the “wilderness” was used to describe any other part of the world. Furthermore, the maps that Jihadist scholars would make would go as far as describing areas like Africa and Sudan as separate entities, even going as far as to split Sudan into non-Muslim and Muslim states, and even Christian states. When it came to defining the borders between different lands, the jihad army would often dedicate responsibilities to its soldiers and leaders. For Sudan, the leader would be tasked with fighting Dar al-Islam or the “Land of Unbelief,” whereas the military was tasked with determining who was worthy of enslavement and who was not, and often other Muslims were let free. It was also encouraged that in territories ruled by non-Muslim leaders, Muslims within the area should revolt because it was believed that a non-Muslim leader, even when ruling over a majority Muslim population, could steer that population down a path of unbelief. Despite being in Sub-Saharan West Africa, the Jihadist scholars had accounted for areas as far as India. With India included in the Sokoto world map, the caliphate and its scholars became increasingly aware of British intervention and considered them a more dangerous threat than those in territories they considered “Dar al-Islam.” Overall, the Sokoto Caliphate had a multitude of scholars that helped advance the jihad which they used to help map out the world to their image to set boundaries and establish control in areas that they considered to be sacred lands for those that actively practiced Islam. By working to achieve that goal, the Sokoto Caliphate, through religious motivations, used its military to enforce its own borders.

Bivins, Mary Wren. Telling Stories, Making Histories: Women, Words, and Islam in Nineteenth-Century Hausaland and the Sokoto Caliphate. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007.

Women in the Sokoto Caliphate played a heavy linguistic role and outside of being seen as religious leaders, women were not treated as equally as men. As the Sokoto Caliphate was coming to realization, women played a key role in establishing the caliphate’s presence by being present in areas with a lot of communication. Some areas in which women were often found would be farms and markets. As it would be through trade that these women would communicate with others, this book uses the perspective of British interviewers, about multiple aspects of life within the Sokoto Caliphate. Markets within Hausaland are stated to have women who mark its boundaries. Women within the Sokoto Caliphate were often expected to serve their husbands and any women who were in close relations with the king were often concubines. Both physically and sexually, women were abused with the only compensation to them being that they were expected to leave stingy or poor husbands and told to marry upwards in class. On top of this, there was an expectation that women were unfaithful which would reinforce the notion that it was acceptable for men to have multiple wives. It would not be until the rise of Abdullahi Ibn Muhammad that women’s rights would begin to be defended. Fodio, in the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate, condemned the mistreatment of women by Hausa kings by stating that their actions went against the teachings of Islam. Fodio would create much reform that would give women rights within the caliphate and his son, Bello, would go on to actively celebrate women who were in the roles of teachers, saints, and scholars. It would be during these reforms that women would begin to take a greater role in the spreading of Islam within the caliphate as they taught in churches and schools. This proved especially effective because women like Nana Asma’u were able to translate Islamic teachings into multiple languages like Fulfulde and Hausa, which contributed to the spread of and security of Islam which was previously stated to be the goal of the caliphate’s jihad. Overall, before the Sokoto Caliphate, women were put into submissive roles under their husbands or any local kings and were expected to be farmers and markets. It would be in these positions that they would learn a multitude of different dialects and languages that they would use under the Sokoto Caliphate to help teach and spread Islam.

Boyd, Jean. The Caliph’s Sister: Nana Asma’u, 1793-1865, teacher, poet, and Islamic leader. F. Cass, 2005.

Nana Asma’u’s earlier life was not filled with a lot of trials and tribulations that were experienced by women mentioned previously. This was mainly because she was the daughter of Fodio and sister of Bello. Before the rise of the Sokoto Caliphate, women were expected to stay at home where they were subjected to the commands of their husbands. Asma’u also had gone to school where she would learn about different religious topics and write poetry. When the Sokoto Caliphate was officially established by her father, she held a fair amount of influence. Asma’u’s works began to take off when Bello became sultan. Asma’u, when preparing to go to war with Ibra, and Tuareg chief, authored a poem that is believed to have spelled bad omens for Ibra that would cause him to turn tail. After this instance, Bello would go on to write the Kitab al-nasiha, which was a book about the inspiration Shia women left on their rulers. Hausa and Sokoto women, as mentioned earlier, were perfect linguists who helped translate text into many different languages. Asma’u would go on to translate the Kitab al-nasiha into Fulfulde and Hausa. Asma’u would then go on to write many more works that would discuss multiple religious beliefs like the Day of Judgement which many would see as worthy of sainthood that would boost her religious standing. As Asma’u’s life continued, she would be appointed with the task of leading “Caliphate women in the paths of orthodoxy.” When interacting with these women, Asma’u treated their quarrels with Shari’a, counseling, prayer, and medicine. Through using these works and remedies, as well as some of her own, Asma’u worked towards leading by example by demonstrating through her writing and actions that having peace of mind with the help of religion could raise the status of the Sokoto woman. Asma’u was regarded as a scholar since many of her writings were highly intelligent and held some sort of religious basis. This is shown when Clapperton compared the wife slaves of Gibado to that of the women who were “allowed more liberty” in the Sokoto Caliphate. Asma’u also focused a portion of her work on educating future generations, and she would accomplish this by targeting and teaching women in more rural areas. Through these actions, Asma’u proves that women under the Sokoto Caliphate could uphold multiple expectations and be able to be proficient in multiple things at once, such as writing, academics, and religion.

Okafor, Amanke, and Paul Robeson. Nigeria Why We Fight for Freedom. London: Amanke Okafor; Farleigh Press Ltd, n.d. Archives Unbound (accessed October 22, 2023). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/SC5110208032/GDSC?u=nclivewfuy&sid=bookmark-GDSC&xid=3ed72a83&pg=1.

The Sokoto Caliphate, like every state before and after it, reaped the benefits from slavery while also suffering from the flaws. The Sokoto Caliphate struggled to become economically independent because it could not meet the rate of compensation that was expected, which was about two pounds per acre. It was because of this that the caliphate had to resort to plantations and agriculture in combination with mining. The caliphate, like many other nations during the period, would fall victim to English colonialism and exploitation as trade with the nation would prove economically imbalanced. Like other countries of the time, the Sokoto Caliphate fell victim to the imperialization of the English as companies and unfair treaties would make their way into trade and would shape it towards the favor of the Europeans. The Europeans had different criteria for countries that were candidates for economic freedom or not that were divided into political status, economic status, and social status. The political factors were primarily if the native government upheld the same values that the English parliament upheld which was whether the government officials were elected by the Nigerian Parliament and held these officials to a certain standard and if those within government were able to properly establish the creation and regulation of military and civil services. The economic factors consisted of the existence of communal land, the full use of agriculture and technology devoted to facilitating such tasks, the building and management of machine-building industries, the use of funds gathered from interstate trading towards at-home industries, resources gathered from both agriculture and mining to be regulated by the government and left under the responsibility of public corporations, a monopoly on foreign trade, co-operative movements between producers and consumers, and the encouragement of workers to not form Unions. Finally, the social factors consisted of a decrease in illiteracy, the teaching of workers in both agricultural and technological industries, the building of hospitals to provide free medical services, fresh water, and plans for the electrification of towns. It was these criteria that the Europeans looked through when deciding whether a country could warrant independence of any kind, and often the nation that they were examining fell short with the Sokoto Caliphate being no exception. The Sokoto Caliphate through slavery and its involvement in slavery and global exchanges experienced more setbacks than benefits, and it would often be circumstances like the ones mentioned above that would lead to the downfall of not only the Sokoto but other nations that would encounter foreign trade.

Salau, Mohammed Bashir. Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study. 1st ed. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018.

Like many nations that participated in economic processing that is slavery, the Sokoto Caliphate experienced its fair share of setbacks and benefits from its use. One of the few ways in which the Sokoto Caliphate benefited from slavery using plantations. The Sokoto Caliphate gained its land that it would use for farming through violence. The Sokoto Caliphate conducted slavery in a way that the noble people who were the richest not only gathered their own wealth but also were exempt from taxes and other financial obligations. When obtaining land from non-Muslim factions, caliphs like Bello often resorted to violence as the jihad leaders, as mentioned earlier, would mark where the “Land of Islam” and “Land of War” were bordered. Captured individuals who were not immediately put into slavery were also indoctrinated into the military. With the heavy emphasis on land acquisition during the jihad, the Sokoto Caliphate established a multitude of plantations that were left in the hands of smaller local leaders to prevent rebellion that were also reinforced by slave soldiers. Much of the land that the Sokoto Caliphate would obtain would be used as plantations to hold slaves, which meant most of the population that were slaves would be commoners. This would result in a boost to the economy because most of the commoners would align themselves with the wealthier aristocrats to move up in prestige and gain access to better trades, which also benefited the aristocrats, raising the value of political officials. This would allow the aristocrats of higher prestige to have a monopoly on trade. This would cause issues as many of the lower-level aristocrats and commoners would have to pay more in taxes, on top of their already required alms. To fix this situation, the caliphate would impose new taxes on certain crops from private landowners. Furthermore, the state would receive a certain percentage of the revenue that plantations gained. This percentage would then be put towards the army or the bettering of other estates. Plantations also boosted the production and trade of different textiles and clothing which brought the caliphate profit through excessive exportation. Overall, the use of plantations helped the caliphate increase its power over conquered territories. Through using plantations, the Sokoto Caliphate benefited from the use of plantations by putting more taxes on higher-ranking aristocrats who were abusing the system. It also proved beneficial to those who owned plantations and the trades that they provided.

Conclusion

Every centralized government must uphold a certain number of expectations that fall under the umbrella categorizations of politics and class, and there are a multitude of factors that a government must take into consideration when ensuring that it is stable and sustainable. The Sokoto Caliphate was no exception to that rule. In the documents sourced above, the Sokoto Caliphate is shown to have dealt with each issue in a multitude of ways. The question this source collection attempted to answer was “How did West African military culture contribute to the evolution of the Sokoto Caliphate?” The Sokoto Caliphate, which came because of victory towards the end of the Fulani Wars began to thrive through its militarization with its reasoning being to provide a safe place for Muslims to collect and practice Islam in peace. However, over time, the caliphate became the stereotypical empire and once fully established, turned its attention towards the establishment of its economy and class. It is through the mentioned sources that it is seen that the Sokoto Caliphate primarily benefited from its militaristic and social developments, but faced many issues on the economic level as it could not keep up with the expectations and tensions imposed on it by the British and had issues of economic corruption. This collection could also raise questions on how to avoid such setbacks that the Sokoto Caliphate faced, and how does a government go about ensuring its success without having to balance both internal and external stresses. Overall, it is important to look at these sources when it comes to understanding not only how the Sokoto Caliphate came and fell out of power, but also to gain a general understanding of why empires function the way they do, and how certain factors come together that lead to the both its downfall and success, as many individual factors can bring both positives and negatives.