Sokoto E4: A West African Caliphate

 

Kano, one of the largest cities in the Sokoto Caliphate, pictured in 1860

By the 1810s, Shehu Usman Dan Fodio had succeeded in besting many of his enemies. The kingdoms of Kasar Hausa were conquered, while several other neighboring regions were also integrated into the growing imamate. With the "jihad" complete, now the next steps of Fodio's revolutionary playbook were on the agenda. Together with his allies in the Jamaa, Fodio began the steps of creating a society based on his ideals.

The new state that Fodio and his allies birthed into the world was one with an immensely complex political system. Arguably, the Sokoto governmental system is easier to understand if you think of the state as a series of aligned polities rather than a single unitary government. 

The head of state and (theoretically) of government was the Amir al-Muminin, or Commander of Believers. This position was intended to be chosen via electoral consensus by the Islamic community, and then serve for life. Of course, Usman Dan Fodio retained his title of Commander of Believers and served as the first leader of the new government. Additionally, to provide his state with further legitimacy and to clarify his mission, the Shehu declared that his new state was a caliphate. In an earlier writing, Masail al-Muhimma, Fodio defined a caliphate as any state governed by someone who sought to act as a successor to the Prophet Muhammad. As a result, the declaration of the Sokoto Caliphate did not represent any attempt by Fodio to position himself as the leader of the entire Islamic world, but rather to state that the mission of his government was to rule in the style of the Prophet Muhammad. Fodio himself rarely even referred to himself as caliph, preferring to retain his old title of Commander of Believers.

The Commander of Believers was largely uninvolved from direct statecraft. Rather, the true executives of the Sokoto Caliphate were the two viziers. The vizier of the west was Usman's brother Abdullahi, who ruled over the regions of Kebbi, Zamfara, and other western regions of the caliphate from his capital at Gwandu. Meanwhile, the eastern portions of the caliphate were overseen by Muhammad Bello from his capital at Sokoto. 

Gwandu remains the capital of its own emirate within modern Nigeria. Pictured here is the entrance to the Gwandu emir's palace.

Each vizier was given the power to appoint a qadi, or judge, for each region, and an emir. The emir essentially acted as the "face of government", performing and overseeing all of the typical responsibilities of the state, such as collecting taxes, enforcing laws, and distributing services. Unlike in the pre-jihad era, where most cities were run by heriditary Sarkis, the emir was, at least in theory, appointed based on merit rather than familial connections. Meanwhile, the qadi was meant to not only oversee judicial functions, but also to ensure that the emir's laws were all within the scholarly consensus of shari'ah.

The nascent caliphate initiated several new sets of reforms, including the creation of a new education system, a grain dole to help poor residents afford food, tax cuts on the working classes, and new regulations to ensure fair trading in the market. 

While the Sokoto Revolution may have seemed like an unimpeachably positive development, this was not necessarily true. Even during the life of Usman Dan Fodio, but especially after his death, the state soon began to slip away from its mission of creating a righteous and Quranic society. Perhaps the most visible failure occured in the immediate aftermath of Fodio's passing. While the succession of the position of Commander of Believers was, in theory, an elected one, the Shehu went out of his way to ensure that his son, Muhammad Bello, ruled the kingdom after him. While Fodio argued that Bello was still the most meritocratic option regardless of his descent, the decision set into motion the transformation of the Caliphate into a de facto hereditary monarchy. Almost immediately, Muhammad Bello implemented a series of new policies clearly designed to ward off potential rivals for power. He centralized the military while dramatically increasing its funds, forcing him to raise taxes on the working classes to compensate.

An 1857 illustration depicting a slave raid by a nobleman living in the caliphate

From a moral perspective, the issues of slavery and militarism forces us to reckon with the otherwise quite positive perception of the Caliphate. The successful conquests of the Caliphate in the south, especially in the former Oyo Empire, produced enormous numbers of war captives. The Sokoto Caliphate maintained the old system of slavery present in Kasar Hausa, involving large communities of enslaved workers concentrated in plantation-esque rural townships. Unlike in some other regions of Africa, slavery in the caliphate was often of the chattel variety, while notions of religious endorsement and psuedo-racialized concepts of "animalistic" southern populations justified the system's existence. In many ways, the economic boom of the early caliphate can be attributed to the system of human misery that underpinned it.

A "slave village" in rural Sokoto

If your interest in the Sokoto Revolution was motivated by a desire to find a historical revolution without hypocrisies, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. However, rather than motivating us to lose interest in the past and its denizens, I believe that morally complex figures like Usman Dan Fodio can be useful guideposts in evaluating our own moral standing. When viewing the past, it is tempting and easy to self-righteously decry the evils some by men and women of yesteryear. What is more challenging but far more enlightening is to remember that we will be in the same position someday, and to use our knowledge of history to better ourselves. Our perceptions are shaped by the paradigms of our day. History can help us identify these paradigms, their moral strengths and shortcomings. What are some things we do today that will provoke similar self-righteous condemnation from our descendants?