West African Islamic reformist ideas of the late 18th and early 19th

centuries were spread by Fulani peoples, who had played a prominent role
in the earlier jihads of Fouta Djallon and Futa Toro. The Fulani—largely
Muslim cattle herders who lived in the savanna lands from Senegal to
Cameroon—typically lived in peace among farming populations. However,
in the Hausa region of what is now northern Nigeria the Fulani became
estranged from what they regarded as the corrupt rule of the nominally
Muslim Hausa aristocracy. They particularly resented the Hausa’s heavy
taxation of their cattle. The Fulani were therefore very receptive to the
reformist teachings of Muslim scholar Usuman dan Fodio, who had begun
his preaching as a young man in the 1770s in the Hausa city-state of
Gobir.

By the early 1800s Usuman had accumulated a considerable following. In

1804 the ruler of Gobir sent his cavalry to capture or kill Usuman, but the
force was defeated by his followers. This military action sparked a
spontaneous revolutionary movement among Fulani and other oppressed
Muslims across the whole of Hausaland. Within four years most of the
Hausa city-states had fallen to the jihad. After Usuman’s death in 1817 his
brother Abdullahi and son Muhammad Bello united the Hausa states into a
single Islamic empire, with its capital at Sokoto. This brought an end to
centuries of rivalry and clashes between the states. By the time of
Muhammad Bello’s death in 1837 this Sokoto Caliphate stretched across
the whole of northern Nigeria and was the largest West African state since
16th-century Songhai. Islam and Sharia (Islamic law) made up the
unifying elements in what was otherwise a federation of semiautonomous
emirates. Literacy became widespread and, with an end to inter-state
Hausa wars, trade flourished. Those who benefited least were the Hausa
peasantry, who had in effect changed one oppressive master for another.

Fulani pastoralists tried to extend the jihad into Bornu, but they were
resisted by Muhammad al-Kanemi, a religious and military leader from
Kanem. Although the state lost control of its eastern Hausa provinces,
Bornu retained its independence under a new dynasty set up by al-
Kanemi’s son Umar.

West of Sokoto, Usuman dan Fodio’s revolution inspired further Fulani-led

jihads and political change. On the upper Niger River, a jihad was led by
Umar Tal, a Muslim preacher from Fouta Toro. In the Fouta Djallon region,
he built up an army and equipped it with firearms, bought in exchange for
captives on the coast. From 1855 to 1862 Umar’s army captured the
Bambara states of Kaarta and Ségou, and the Fulani state of Macina. He
thus created what was known as the Tukolor Empire, which stretched
from Fouta Djallon to Tombouctou. Following Umar’s death in 1864,
Tukolor was weakened by internal revolts and was conquered by the
French in 1893.