Shaihu Usman dan Fodio -- Nigeria

Shaihu Usman dan Fodio (also referred to as Shaikh Usman Ibn Fodio, Shehu Uthman Dan Fuduye, or Shehu Usman dan Fodio,) was the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1809, a religious teacher, writer and Islamic promoter.

dan Fodio was one of a class of urbanised ethnic Fulani living in the Hausa States in what is today northern Nigeria.  A teacher of the Maliki school of law and the Qadiriyyah order of Sufism, he lived in the city-state of Gobir until 1802.  Motivated by his reformist ideas and increased repression by local authorities, he led his followers into exile.   Dan Fodio declined much of the pomp of rulership, and while developing contacts with religious reformists and Jihad leaders across Africa, passed the leadership of the Sokoto state to his son, Muhammed Bello.

dan Fodio wrote more than a hundred books concerning religion, government, culture and society.  He developed a critique of African Muslim elites for what he saw as their greed, paganism, or violation of the standards of Sharia law, and heavy taxation.  

He encouraged literacy and scholarship, women, and several of his daughters emerged as scholars and writers. His writings and sayings continue to be much quoted today, and is often affectionately referred to as Shehu in Nigeria. 

Some followers consider dan Fodio to have been a Mujaddid, a divinely inspired "reformer of Islam".  dan Fodio' was well-educated in classical Islamic science, philosophy and theology and became a revered religious thinker.  His teacher, Jibril ibn 'Umar, argued that it was the duty and within the power of religious movements to establish the ideal society free from oppression and vice.  His teacher was a North African Muslim alim who gave his apprentice a broader perspective of the Muslim reformist ideas in other parts of the Muslim world.  dan Fodio used his influence to secure approval to create a religious community in his hometown of Degel that he hoped, would be a model town.

In 1802, the ruler of Gobir and one of dan Fodio's students, Yunfa turned against him, revoking Degel's autonomy and attempted to assassinate him.  dan Fodio and his followers fled into the western grasslands of Gudu where they turned for help to the local Fulani nomads.  In his book Usman wrote: “The government of a country is the government of its king without question.  If the king is a Muslim, his land is Muslim; if he is an Unbeliever, his land is a land of Unbelievers. In these circumstances it is obligatory for all Muslims to leave it for another country”.  Usman did exactly this when he left Gobir in 1802. In 1804, Yunfa dan Nafata, the military commander of Gobir, sent his army to challenge Usman’s community which now included Fulani pastoralists who had their own grievances against Hausa rulers.

dan Fodio seized on this incident to call for jihad against the rulers of Gobir.  By 1808, he and his followers conquered Gobir, Kano, and other Hausa city-states.  He retired from battle in 1811 and returned to teaching and writing but his armies continued their conquests until 1815.  By that time, Usman dan Fodio's religious empire included most of what is now northern Nigeria and northern Cameroon as well as parts of Niger.  For the first time in history all of the Hausa city-states were now under one ruler.  dan Fodio established a new capital at Sokoto and soon this theocratic state was called the Sokoto Caliphate (Sokoto Empire).  From the time of Usman dan Fodio there were twelve caliphs, until the British conquest at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Usman dan Fodio divided his conquests between his brother, Abdullahi, who ruled the western part of the kingdom, and his son, Muhammad Bello, who ruled the eastern part of the kingdom including the Hausa city-states.  By the end of Bello’s rule in 1837, the Sokoto Caliphate, with an estimated 20 million people, had become the most populous empire in West Africa.  dan Fodio, who had begun his life as an idealistic scholar and theologian who at first rejected the sword, eventually became the forceful and commanding leader of a formidable military empire.  He died on April 20, 1817 in Sokoto

Usman dan Fodio’s jihad inspired a series of holy wars throughout the Western Sudan and made Islam the dominant faith among the masses of people from Senegal to Chad.  His movement also led to a poetic and literary explosion in Gobir, Kano, Katsina, and other Hausa city states.  The surviving Arabic writings of the Sokoto Caliphate far outnumber the whole literary production of the central and western Sudan from 1000 AD, when Islam first appeared in West Africa, up to 1802.  Arabic was now widely used for diplomacy and correspondence throughout the region.