The New Cadre of ‘Ulama

With the jihad won, the ‘ulama of the new Sokoto Caliphate offered a clean break, intellectually, from the historical fantasies of the previous regimes in Hausaland. For the jihadi ‘ulama, as for Shaikh ‘Uthman himself, their new imam was a mujaddid, and nothing more universal like, say, the Mahdi who was due to lead the Muslim umma at the end of time.

The reluctance of the ‘ulama to make great claims is in marked contrast to the ‘ulama who had advised earlier Muslim rulers of the great Hausa cities and else­where in West Africa. These had suggested Middle Eastern origins for the ruling elites of over 40 groups in West Africa, linking them to Baghdad, Nimrud, Palestine, Abu Yazid, Goliath, Chosroes, and Jewish prophets—thus giving the West African elite in place after place a claim to being part of a “universal” monarchical tradition.

Other links, to ‘Uqba b. Nafi, to Fatimid refugees from Egypt, even to Himyaritic regimes in Yemen offered marginally more exact roots. Later, in the twentieth century, scholars constructed for the founders of the Sokoto Caliphate a genealogy back to the Prophet himself (a claim Shaikh ‘Uthman never made for himself; his junior brother ‘Abdullah did once suggest, however, that they had Jewish ancestors). More widespread was the practice of using Middle Eastern ethnic labels for local, subordinate non-Muslim groups, thus giving them the legitimately protected status of ahl al-dhimma: Maguzawa (Majus, as old-style Persians), Rumawa (Rum, as Christians), Gazarawa (Khazar as Jews?), Jalutawa (Philistines); some labels were simply from the ancient Arabian Peninsula, such as Samodawa (Thamud) and Adawa (‘Ad).

Knowledge of the contemporary world beyond West Africa was quite extensive for the ‘ulama class. Over the centuries many had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, others had traded to Tunis, Tripoli, and Cairo. News of the British takeover of India was known in the 1820s. One Sokoto scholar wrote a book of geography, but mostly it was the history of the Islamic world and its neighbors that the early nineteenth-century Sokoto elite had read and could recall in their conversations with visiting Britons or Germans.^[2482] Hence their use of the title amir al-mu’minin was founded upon a familiarity with both the Ottoman state and the wider world— it was no vainglorious boast of universal dominion, but more a call for all Muslims in West Africa to unite under the jihadi flag of the reformer Shaikh ‘Uthman. These Muslims included especially all “Blacks” (al-Sudan); the first amir al-mu’minin, Muhammad Bello, had before his accession the title amir al-Sudan, which reflects the movement’s call to all non-whites to join the umma. Shaikh ‘Uthman and his colleagues, like all Fulbe, considered themselves as “whites”—the same as North Africans and Arabs; Europeans when they came were seen as “reds.” The townsmen and villagers they now governed were all “Blacks”—if Hausa-speaking, they had been classified as Muslims in dar al-Islam since ca. 1600 (but many of the Sudan in western Africa were still to become Muslim). Thus for the new caliphate’s learned elite, the use of classical Arabic as the lingua franca among them was normal for them as part of the wider Arabic-speaking non-Black world. However, after a gen­eration or two, the ruling elite spoke the local non-elite tongue, Hausa, except in the far east of the caliphate, where the ruling elite’s own tongue of Fulfulde became the lingua franca for the various peoples they now ruled.

This new, post-jihad cadre of ‘ulama, as primarily scholars and teachers, could maintain their distance from their local emir and his officials (even though some of these officials were recruited from among the ‘ulama). This new cadre was thus rather different from the ‘ulama who had advised the pre-jihad emirs: many of these had been Wangarawa merchant-scholars. The new cadre, like the new political elite, was expected neither to be merchants nor to engage in trade, so financially they depended on gifts for the scholarly services they provided to the community or on land cultivated by their slaves if they had some. An emir and his officials, though formally following Shari‘a law, might act in ways the ‘ulama and the local popu­lace generally disapproved of (justice being the key item in good Islamic govern­ance), but they were powerless to stop him. Some emirs are reported as having been much more oppressive (some almost psychopathic) than others; a truly good emir is recollected as being ultra-pious. His military successes, however, depended on both the willingness of his people to support him wholeheartedly and his ability at mustering a sufficiently large enough, competent force: at least one amir al- mu'minin was nicknamed “unbaked pot” (danyen kasko)—a pot so useless that it cannot hold water. Nicknames often reveal how variable was popular estimation of the emir, but how openly used were these nicknames during an emir's reign is im­possible to recover now.

The establishment of the caliphate thus led to a new, larger class of ‘ulama (and kuttab more generally), with their own large private libraries of Arabic manuscripts; several scholars who taught did not need books—they had them all memorized.^[2483] Whereas under the various pre-jihad emirates merchants such as the Wangarawa were often acting as self-financed ‘ulama as well as government advisers, with the Sokoto Caliphate such Sudani learned merchants were not given governmental roles, in part because many of them had opposed the jihad, with their families being now labeled as Habe (Fulfulde for “Black” or, worse, not properly Muslim, even to this day). Thus the ‘ulama more generally, like the cities in which they lived, could be split according to the roles they had played in the jihad.