Why every Nigerian should be proud of the Sokoto Caliphate – Prof Murray Last

As a scholar, Murray Last, has always being upfront about his commitment to Nigeria. After defending his doctorate thesis at University of Ibadan (UI) in 1964, he was told that he could have his PhD awarded by either the University of London or UI. He chose UI despite knowing that Oxford, Cambridge and other ivy-league […]

As a scholar, Murray Last, has always being upfront about his commitment to Nigeria. After defending his doctorate thesis at University of Ibadan (UI) in 1964, he was told that he could have his PhD awarded by either the University of London or UI. He chose UI despite knowing that Oxford, Cambridge and other ivy-league universities are disdainful of PhD from third world universities and are not likely to employ him.

That thesis was first published in 1967 as The Sokoto Caliphate and, fifty-four years on, it remains the most authentic account of the structure and administration of the state known by that name, also known as the ‘Fulani Empire’. Since his student days in Ibadan, Professor Last has traveled widely across Nigeria, living modestly as a ‘traditional’ Muslim student in Zaria, a farmhand in a commercial non-Muslim farmstead and teacher at Bayero University, Kano.

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Now Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, University College London, Professor Last visits Nigeria every year for a month at least. He was already working with Premium Times Books to publish the Nigerian edition of The Sokoto Caliphate when the Covid-19 shutdown halted travel and activities around the world. In the interview he talks about the book and his life in Nigeria during the First Republic.

 

By Ladi Olorunyomi

You first heard about the Sokoto Caliphate while working on your Master’s degree at Yale almost sixty years after the demise of the Caliphate. What excited you about it? Why did you decide to conduct research work on it?

At Yale, I took a course on African History taught by the elderly historian of Cameroon, Harry Rudin. It was on that course, which I was doing alongside courses on Chinese history, that I first heard of the ‘Fulani Empire’ and the role of the Qadiriyya in northern Nigeria. But my 1961 MA thesis at Yale was a translation from the Mandinka of a biography of the great state-builder Samori Toure. So, I was only drawn to a study of the ‘Fulani Empire’ when I was at UCI [University College, Ibadan], where my supervisor was Prof. H F C Smith. At Ibadan I started learning classical Arabic and was encouraged to research the collection of 19th century Arabic correspondence that HFC Smith learnt was in the Waziri’s house in Sokoto.

So, in December 1961, as a postgraduate student in the History Department of University College Ibadan (staying in Sultan Bello Hall), I was taken to Kano in the Arabist, John Hunwick’s VW, via Abuja (now Suleja) and Zaria. In Kano, John Hunwick and I catalogued the Arabic manuscripts in the Shahuci Judicial School library where the Kano Emirs’ old collection of manuscripts was then housed. The collection was later burnt in a fire at the Shahuci school. From Kano, I went to spend Christmas with a schoolteacher friend in Maiduguri. From there, in January, I returned to UCI and Sultan Bello Hall, till the rainy season came.

I was then despatched to Sokoto with the Sudanese scholar Muhammad al-Hajj, who introduced me to Waziri Junaidu. The Waziri gave me lodgings next to his house in Gidadawa, Sokoto, and each day was then spent in the small study room, where the Arabic correspondence was kept in his house. I was fed tuwo and miyar kuka each evening by the Waziri’s servant, Mallam Shehu.

So, my initial interest in Sokoto specifically was sparked by my teachers in Ibadan, not in Yale. But to Harry Rudin I owe my introduction to African History, which I preferred to Chinese history (as I could only go, in those days, to Hong Kong to learn Chinese). The scholars in Ibadan who taught me all had Sudanese connections – H.F.C. Smith had taught in the Sudan as had John Hunwick; Fathi El-Masri and Muhammad Ahmed al-Hajj were both Sudanese historians. In Kano were several Sudanese scholars and merchants whom they all knew well; many had taught at the long-established School for Arabic Studies in Kano or supplied the advanced Arabic texts/books.

 

As a jurisdiction, what’s the exact equivalent of the Sokoto Caliphate in modern, i.e., 21st century, understanding? Was it a country, a republic, federation, confederation? What are the defining qualities?

The state which we re-labelled as ‘the Sokoto caliphate’ (rejecting the colonial term, ‘Fulani empire’) would now be labelled a confederation of emirates under a single Amir al-mu’minin or sarkin Musulmi / lamido Julbe – that is, the commander-in-chief of the whole Muslim community within the total area responsive to his leadership. The state was based on shari’a law, so the Sarkin Musulmi was both the community’s most senior Imam and its most senior judicial officer (assisted by a specialist Qadi /Alkali). It was that formal judicial authority rather than some military role that made an Amir al-mu’minin.

When you say Caliph or Caliphate these days, the immediate reference for hundred million twitter users – I use the term twitterati – is ISIS and its now deceased leader, the terror associated with him and his followers across the world, including Boko Haram and ISWAP. What would you say to the twitterati about the Sokoto Caliphate?

Given that formal role, the Sarkin Musulmi was also ‘Caliph’ as there was no other senior Muslim leader in the area. The Ottoman caliphs were too far way; the Borno Mai had left his capital and was no longer a ‘caliph’. But the Sakkwatawa rarely if ever actually referred to the Sarkin Musulmi as ‘Caliph’ – it was never their preferred term (which was Lamido Julbe or, in Arabic documents and books, Amir al-mu’minin). Waziri Junaidu rarely used ‘caliph’ himself but was aware of the usage when speaking of Sarkin Musulmi Muhammad Bello. ‘Uthman dan Fodio was never called ‘caliph’ – only ‘Shehu’ or al-Shaikh. He was elected the ‘Imam’ of the jama’a. So Muhammad Bello was effectively the first Caliph, as the immediate heir of the Shehu. Prof. H.F.C. Smith (after 1966 known as Abdullahi Smith) used sometimes in his lectures the terms ‘caliph’ and ‘caliphate’ for the state centred on Sokoto, but it was I who chose ‘The Sokoto Caliphate’ as the title of my book (Smith preferred ‘caliphate of Sokoto’ but I liked the euphony of ‘Sokoto Caliphate’ with the Sarkin Musulmi Muhammad Bello’s personal seal below on the cover).

The current fashion for Islamic radicals such as ISIS to call themselves a caliphate is just a rhetorical boast – in no way are or were they ever the sole Amir of the Muslim umma in their wider region, the Middle East. It was the colonial British ca. 1903 who translated Sarkin Musulmi as ‘Sultan’. That title ‘Sultan’, in the Arabic correspondence of the precolonial 19th century, was only ever applied to the Emir of Kano or rarely to the Emir of Zaria. The British regarded the Ottoman caliphate as the ‘normal’ users of the title ‘caliph’, so to have used it for the man they appointed as the new Sarkin Musulmi in Sokoto was inappropriate, especially as he was allowed much reduced powers: they ‘downgraded’ his title to ‘Sultan’, while using only ‘Emir’ for other rulers such as Kano, Zaria and others. For my book’s title it would have been grossly anachronistic (and colonialist) to have used ‘The Sultanate of Sokoto’: we wanted only the term that could have been used by men like Waziri Gidado or Muhammad Bello himself. Hence, ‘The Sokoto Caliphate’. Waziri Junaidu of course knew about the choice of title and had no objections. As did the Sarkin Musulmi, when he permitted my use of his ancestor’s seal.

If you are worried about the ‘twitterati’, let them learn some more complicated Islamic history and ignore today’s political exaggerations and boasts!

I saw a headline statement once, it was credited to you, it read – I’m paraphrasing – there would be no Nigeria without the Sokoto Caliphate. Many Nigerians today will take issue with that statement. Give an insight into the historical and colonial context that used the Caliphate as the foundation for a new geo-political entity.

The Royal Niger Company men, who made the first agreements with the Sokoto caliphate in Sokoto, were interested in the huge market that the whole caliphate seemed to offer to any organised commercial firm dealing in cloth and other items from Europe. As primarily river-borne merchants, they could ship goods in and out of the southern parts of the Sokoto caliphate much more easily than if they traded overland up from Lagos, through its insecure, forested hinterland to the river.

Access to the River Niger and River Benue ports was via southern Nigeria – hence it made sense to try and monopolise all the import and export trade of the whole area and control that area as a whole. Given the reluctance of the Sokoto state to get too involved with the Royal Niger Company, the Company decided to use military intimidation to force agreements on various Emirs. It was the RNC’s policy to attempt to create for itself a single huge trading area.

The great population (and its proven productivity in foodstuffs, cotton goods – as the soil was fertile and the labour force large), along with its easy accessibility by ship, made northern Nigeria a much bigger potential prize than a fragmented southern Nigeria; and since northern Nigeria was governed by a single centralised administration, it was realistic (if a bit visionary!) to think that the whole market could be taken over. The new railway in southwestern Nigeria could thus be connected (via Jebba) to the northern railway lines (then at Baro); political amalgamation was based on a rather pragmatic amalgamation of railways! And one long railway line was better than riverboats.

Had the rich northern plains been merely a series of independent warring statelets, the Royal Niger Company would have had to make treaties with each one-by-one, if indeed it could; by making treaties or subduing the Caliphate as a whole, the merchants’ dream of a “Nigeria” as a trading entity became feasible: the prosperous northern plains could have access to a harbour (at Lagos), with a railway from Kano to the sea. Hence “Nigeria” as a huge colonial project depended upon the RNC successfully taking control of the core of the Sokoto caliphate. And keeping it out of the hands of their keen French and German competitors!

The urban legend about the Uthman b Fodiye-led jihadi movement paints the picture of a lust for conquest and domination, you would typically hear some Nigerians talk about the unrealized ambition of the jihadists to dip the Qur’an in the sea. Is that true of the movement? Is the evolution from jihad to the Caliphate indicative of such ambition? How did the jihad evolve into the Caliphate?

Uthman dan Fodio never personally fought in a battle, and his main early (1793) book, Ihya’ al-sunna, never mentions jihad. He was never a military commander. He certainly wanted the Hausa Muslim states to be more shari’a compliant, but there is no reason to think the Shehu expected the great Hausa cities to fall to his rather small forces (remember, the force that took Zaria city on the morning of Saturday 31st December 1808 consisted of only about 70 men!). Those cities looked invincible but Kano, Daura, Katsina, Zaria – even Birni Ngazargamu – all fell without a siege. Only Birnin Kebbi and Alkalawa fell eventually to jihadi attacks.

What is clear, though, is that at its height, young ambitious men were sent (or simply went) to the frontiers of the caliphate to make their reputations, and probably their fortunes, by fighting and raiding across the caliphate’s frontiers. This is where your ‘lust for conquest’ comes from; or indeed the supposed ‘flag in the sea’. I don’t know the actual evidence for that remark ever being used in the 19th century It’s not in any of the Arabic material I have ever seen. And anyway, it was irrelevant as Yorubaland was already Muslim – Lagos, Abeokuta and Ibadan were all Muslim camps or cities – so it was your Ikko/Eko elite who were already dipping the flags of Islam in the sea whenever (or if) they felt like doing so: but quite why they’d want to [do so] is beyond me. There will, also, have been a few Muslim merchants in Calabar too – whether in the oil, ivory or the slave trades, or all three. So, the (modern?) notion of the Shehu’s jihad reaching the Atlantic is mere rhetoric – Islam had already reached that shore.

One of my favourite takeaways from your book is the encounter between William Wallace of the Royal Niger Company and Waziri Muhammad Bukhari [in 1894]. Wallace recounts that the Waziri was seated on a mat “quietly studying, through a pair of large, horn-rimmed spectacles, an Arabic manuscript”. With the possible exception of the coastal cities of Lagos and Calabar, the image of a studious bespectacled African in Nigeria of 1894 is pretty outlandish compared to the reality across the country. What does that image surmise about the Sokoto Caliphate?

The expansion of the jama’a out of Sokoto depended on Islamic scholars and students from all the different parts of the northern plains wanting to be taught by the Shehu and to join, as serious students, in his new Sufi circle that was the disciplined Qadiriyya. Once the Shehu’s brother and the Shehu’s sons had shown their father that they could, in their small bands of about 50 each, not only survive but win, the Shehu sent the now Islamically qualified students off back to their homes with the authority from him (in the form of a plain white flag for each key one of them) to attract like-minded young men and try to take over or reform their local centres of power. And this they did, remarkably easily (or so it seems in hindsight).

Most of the early students with a flag were primarily scholars, not jarumai or warriors. But once they grew old or died, more military-minded colleagues took over power – necessarily as there was widespread revolt once the original ruling malamai had passed away. You had to know how to fight, how to organise an army and ensure that it won. Not easy!

I suspect that you, Ladi, and many others may not fully appreciate how DIFFICULT it can be to start up a new principled administration with rather few men to help you – let alone to keep it running as you think it should. That was as true for the colonial British as it was for the jihadi scholars who had to move away from just reading and writing books/fine poetry and learn to ride rough horses, wield lances and swords; plus, they then had to hear disputes and make the correct judicial decision in ‘difficult’ cases, day after day. It doesn’t “just happen”!

But some scholars in the Sokoto administration tried to keep up their scholarship too. Given the amount of blindness – from cataract if nothing else – eyeglasses were useful imports brought in by north African merchants and quite possibly the RNC: there will have been a market for them! Reading books by oil lamp – not your nice paraffin lamp but a small clay bowl of groundnut or shea oil with a cotton string lit as the wick – for that you needed quite good eyesight. Many books were written by such poor light, though probably first composed off-head. But many were the texts, or bits of texts, that the scholars knew off-head, so they weren’t always running, like I am, to the bookshelf to find an exact reference. It’s so different – as I found out when I was a traditional Islamic student in Zaria city (with the Limamin Kona). My fellow students made me feel VERY stupid, except they were too courteous to show it. Again, I don’t think academics today are truly aware of what it took to be a ‘real’ ‘alim in those precolonial days.

The Caliphate officially ceased to exist after the defeat of Caliph Muhammad Attahiru in 1903. Some analysts describe the defeat as a transition from Caliphate to Sultanate. How do you describe the post-1903 reality of the Caliphate?

Yes, 1903 saw the diminution of the Sarkin Musulmi’s power, if not his implicit authority, over his subordinate Emirs. Not that Sarkin Kano was in any way ever ‘weaker’ practically than the Sarkin Musulmi – Sarkin Kano was richer, much better dressed, had a larger army, a stronger city, and so was known as ‘Sultan Kano’. In short, Sarkin Kano ruled a (large) place and its jama’a, NOT over all Muslims, the umma. But you seem not to appreciate that the unfortunate Sarkin Musulmi, Attahiru – while determined to oppose this invasive band of Kano-Hausa troops (mainly ex-RNC men) led by a handful of Nasara (Christians) in 1903 – had not actually been calmly elected (as Sarkin Musulmi) in the normal Sokoto way, so that many of the Sokoto army – alaas! – stayed away from the battle. He wasn’t impressively pious: he openly feared death, as observers happened to notice in the two serious battles he was present at. Meanwhile the colonial Brits, once in control, simply followed their practice in India where the Indian ‘princely states’ governed themselves under the eye of a ‘Resident’. Lugard’s “indirect rule” was nothing new. He, and especially his brother, knew Indian government practice well, as did most middle-class Britons who might be seeking employment in the new colonial administration; but they had to have had some military experience as well – many had learnt that trade in the Boer war. So the new “Sultan of Sokoto” was like, say, the Nizam of Hyderabad? Nonetheless the colonial men (some ex-RNC employees) never really felt secure. They could be murdered – and a few were.

When the defunct Northern Region became self-governing in 1959, colonial administrators gave back the Caliphate flag and standard of office that they seized when Caliph Attahiru was defeated. What should Nigerians make of that gesture?

You are slightly over-dramatising the shift in 1959, Ladi, except that ‘drama’ was all part of the hype. There are/were quite a few flags around the north, and most very nondescript: they aren’t ‘special’ or ‘sacred’. An army used various flags, often more than one, to mark out key figures in the rather chaotic force that was on the move or encamped. The Britons probably took the one used at Sokoto as a souvenir and put it in the army (WAFF) museum in Zaria. There was no precolonial ‘staff of office’ – that was a British innovation as a symbol of authority, along with all the different ‘classes’ of Emirs and chiefs. All a bit absurd, but part of the ‘dramatics’ of power. The Emir of Kano had his own car well before any Resident did, for example (he was also paid more than the Resident: one Resident minuted that the Emir of Kano had more power than he had). Attahiru as Sarkin Musulmi will have used another flag when he set off on his hijra to Mecca (there was a special flag-bearer). I am not sure which flag was the one used in the dramatics of 1959, but it was all part of the Sardauna’s interest in pomp and circumstance, prompted undoubtedly by some of his strongly pro-Northern, British employees (who drafted for him his ‘auto’-biography).

If Caliph Muhammad Bello, arguably the most influential of the Caliphs, could somehow appear at the court in Sokoto today, what will he find familiar and be able to relate to?

If Muhammad Bello returned to assess ‘the North’, I think he’d be impressed by the attempts to have shari’a law in use. He’d be surprised by the total absence of slaves and (mostly) concubines: remember, a few Emirs had as many as “600” concubines. Above all, he’d be shocked by [a] the sheer number of people everywhere but especially [b] by the scale of the huge cities and towns, with wide roads and bridges everywhere (remember, the main route between Sokoto and Katsina was a path about two-foot wide in some places ca. 1906). He’d also find most of the ‘bush’ and the major forests had gone. But he’d be more saddened by the decline of Gwandu’s authority in the far west, where it stretched as far as Burkina Faso today; and he’d probably be sorrowed by the loss of eastern Adamawa to Cameroun. And Borno might seem a shadow of its former self.

Gidado dan Laima, the longest-serving Waziri, was appointed by Caliph Muhammad Bello. Is it factual to say the two men shaped the golden age of the Caliphate and the Vizierate?

Yes, Bello and Gidado managed the huge transition from the days of the Shehu with his enormous, caliphate-wide baraka that overwhelmed Muslims and non-Muslims alike. But you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of ‘Abdullahi dan Fodio in Gwandu and how he sustained scholarship for a decade after the Shehu died. He was the better Arabist, the stricter legalist – but wasn’t, it seems, so interested in running a mega-state, let alone a sub-state. Whereas Bello did it all, with energy and firmness (perhaps too firm).

Is it also factual to say that the Vizierate became custodian of the Caliphate’s intellectual legacy post 1903?

Yes, I think the Gidado family had both a library and a serious scholarly interest, though Gidado himself did not perhaps write as elegantly or as much as ‘Abd al-Qadir “Dan Tafa”. Gidado had the political acumen and diplomatic skill necessary – though he had his critics too! He kept at bay the very ambitiously domineering visitor, al-hajj ‘Umar al-Futi, and, ca. 1837, sent him on his way west.

Culled from http://www.premiumtimesng.com, continued on www.dailytrust.com