When I wrote my piece defending the Sokoto Caliphate against the reckless and ahistorical label of “terrorist organisation,” the range of responses I received compelled me to revisit the Jihad of Shehu Uthman Danfodio and provide an informed intellectual background to its origins, context, and moral foundations. Yet, it is clear that some Hausa tribalists still nurse old grudges against Danfodio and his epoch-changing reforms. Their rejoinders betray not scholarship but sentiment, not historical understanding but inherited bitterness. It is their right, in this still-free world, to be guided by their whims. As for me, I am a Muslim, and I will not shy away from defending Islam and honoring the monumental legacy of its reformers like Danfodio. I will not descend into fruitless exchanges rooted in emotion, shallow reasoning, or half-digested history. This piece is written for one purpose alone: to set the record straight.
The rejoinder authored by Khalid Alhawsawi under the self-styled label Hausa Historical Defender represents a growing trend of ethnocentric historiography that substitutes polemics for evidence. His attempt to equate the nineteenth-century Sokoto Reform Movement with twenty-first-century extremist insurgencies is not only methodologically defective but betrays a profound unfamiliarity with classical Islamic jurisprudence, the historiography of Hausaland, and the documented writings of Sheikh Uthman Ɗan Fodio and his contemporaries. Any credible engagement with the period requires careful attention to the primary Arabic sources, the Hausa chronicles, and the extensive academic literature produced over the last seven decades. Yet the rejoinder rests almost entirely on anachronistic analogies, selective quotation, and ethnic grievance narratives that collapse under scholarly scrutiny.
The core methodological error emerges at the very outset: the comparison of the Sokoto Jihad to Boko Haram. This is a textbook case of anachronism, a fallacy in which modern categories are projected onto premodern societies without regard for historical context.[1] Boko Haram, an ultra-Khawariji movement whose creed rejects classical Maliki jurisprudence, ijmā‘ (consensus), and the madhhab tradition, cannot intellectually or theologically be placed alongside a nineteenth-century reform movement rooted in the works of al-Maghīlī, Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ, Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, Khalīl ibn Ishāq, and the juristic norms of Timbuktu and Agadez. Uthman Ɗan Fodio’s own corpus — including I‘jāz al-Ḥukkām, Tanbīh al-Ikhwān, and Bayān Wujūb al-Hijra — demonstrates strict adherence to Maliki usūl and the classical conditions governing amr bil-ma‘rūf, nahi ‘an al-munkar, hijra, and legitimate resistance.[2] Boko Haram’s doctrinal foundations arise from entirely different epistemic, legal, and spiritual lineages, and the attempt to place them on a parallel track is not an act of historical reasoning but of political sensationalism.
The claim that Hausa rulers were uniformly righteous Muslims — a necessary foundation of Alhawsawi’s critique — is contradicted not by Fulani writers but by the Hausa chronicles themselves. The Kano Chronicle, for instance, documents syncretic rituals, spirit-possession practices (bori), and political manipulation of religious institutions across successive reigns.[3] Similarly, the Gobir traditions preserved in precolonial manuscripts reference episodes of persecution of scholars, imposition of taxes without legal basis, and prohibitions on certain forms of Islamic preaching. These internal sources form the backbone of the early nineteenth-century critique of Hausa statecraft. Furthermore, Abdullahi Ɗan Fodio’s Diyā’ al-Ḥukkām outlines in detail the juridical grounds on which resistance to the rulers became obligatory, referencing specific violations such as unlawful taxation, forced participation in non-Islamic rites, and suppression of scholarly independence.[4] To claim that all Hausa scholars were pagans, as Alhawsawi alleges the reformers did, is historically false; yet to argue that the mere existence of Hausa scholars proves the moral legitimacy of Hausa rulers is an equally flawed inference. The presence of religious teachers within a society does not immunize its political leadership from critique — just as the Quraysh had monotheists among them, yet their oppression invalidated their rule.
The portrayal of Sarki Yunfa as a devout Muslim unjustly opposed by rebellious students glosses over the extensive documentation of his anti-scholarly policies. Gobir manuscripts and early colonial witnesses alike record that Yunfa’s court sanctioned harassment of Muslim preachers, imposed dress restrictions on pious women, prohibited public teaching, attempted to assassinate Ɗan Fodio at Alkalawa, and confiscated property from Muslim communities under dubious legal pretexts.[5] The mere fact that Yunfa once studied under Ɗan Fodio does not absolve him. Many unjust rulers — from the Umayyads to certain Mamluk sultans — had learned from pious teachers; Islamic legal theory has never equated student-teacher relations with spiritual legitimacy.
When Alhawsawi cites the prophetic injunction to obey the ruler even if he is a Habashi slave, he ignores the accompanying legal conditions emphasized by classical jurists. For obedience is conditional upon the ruler’s upholding of justice, non-persecution of believers, and non-enforcement of clear disobedience to God. Ibn Taymiyya, Qadi ‘Iyāḍ, al-Qarāfī, al-Bājī, and Ibn al-‘Arabī all establish that rebellion becomes licit under specific circumstances, particularly when rulers suppress the essentials of religion, persecute scholars, or enforce innovations.[6] The Sokoto leadership justified its actions on precisely these jurisprudential criteria, aligning their movement with classical Maliki thought, not with unstructured insurrectionism.
The allegation that Danfodio’s followers massacred Hausa scholars in places like Ƴandoto or Ngazargamu is based on selective reading. The scholars targeted were not neutral religious figures; they were court-aligned jurists who issued fatwas legitimizing the persecution and displacement of Muslim communities and who functioned as part of the political apparatus of oppression.[7] Classical jurisprudence categorizes such individuals among ahl al-baghy when they actively support a tyrannical state in suppressing religion. Moreover, numerous primary sources attest that Danfodio’s armies were instructed to spare non-combatants, respect women and children, and avoid indiscriminate harm — rules of engagement explicitly laid down in Tanbīh al-Ikhwān and echoed by European observers such as Denham, Clapperton, and Barth, who were impressed by the comparative restraint of the Sokoto forces.[8]
The argument that the post-jihad leadership structure was a Fulani ethnic occupation repeats a common modern misconception. The Sokoto political order was fundamentally meritocratic, not ethnically structured. A significant number of early emirs and governors were Hausa, Tuareg, Kanuri, and Nupe, while others of Fulani origin never held political office at all. The assertion that Hausa collaborators were sidelined is contradicted by archival lists of emirate formations; even in Katsina, Zaria, Zamfara, Argungu, and the eastern emirates, Hausa elites maintained administrative and judicial roles.[9] The prominent presence of Fulani scholars in positions of authority is more a consequence of pedagogical networks and patterns of persecution under Hausa rulers — which had forced many Fulani jurists into itinerant lifestyles — than evidence of an ethnic takeover.
The claim that hijra to Gudu was a form of extremist retreat comparable to Boko Haram’s movement to Kanamma demonstrates a misunderstanding of both Islamic history and jurisprudence. Hijra is a well-established institution mandated when scholars face persecution that prevents them from fulfilling their obligations. Malik ibn Anas, Ibn al-Qāsim, and later Maghribi and Saharan jurists clarified that relocating from a land of persecution is not only permissible but required.[10] Ɗan Fodio’s hijra followed the Prophetic model and was accompanied by fatwas from multiple juristic authorities; extremist groups today retreat not for doctrinal reasons but for tactical concealment, a categorically different phenomenon.
Every reputable historian of West Africa — from H.R. Palmer and M.G. Smith to Humphrey Fisher, John Hunwick, Lamin Sanneh, Paul Lovejoy, Joseph Schacht, Murray Last, and Beverly Mack — rejects the thesis that the Sokoto Jihad was an ethnic conquest or a proto-terrorist movement. The evidence overwhelmingly supports its character as a complex Islamic reform effort grounded in classical jurisprudence, responding to genuine moral, social, and political crises in the Hausa states. By contrast, Alhawsawi’s rejoinder relies neither on primary source methodology nor on established historiography but rather on presentist political anxieties projected backwards into history.
In conclusion, the rejoinder attempts to rewrite a sophisticated intellectual and social reform movement into a simplistic narrative of ethnic aggression by deploying inappropriate analogies, selective quotations, and logical fallacies. It ignores the extensive jurisprudential writings of the Sokoto scholars, disregards the internal critiques found in the Hausa chronicles, and fails to engage with the global scholarship that has meticulously examined these events. Academic rigor demands that we distinguish between historical analysis and political polemics; the rejoinder falls decisively into the latter category. An honest reading of the sources, supported by classical Islamic legal theory and modern historical research, affirms that the Sokoto Jihad was not a terrorist enterprise nor an ethnic conquest, but a religious and socio-political reform movement situated firmly within the intellectual traditions of West African Islam. May Allah the Almighty open our hearts to the truth
The following footnotes can be referred to for more information for the seekers of true knowledge:
[1] Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, Cambridge University Press.
[2] See Uthman Ɗan Fodio, Tanbīh al-Ikhwān, manuscript editions; also Bayān Wujūb al-Hijra.
[3] H.R. Palmer (trans.), The Kano Chronicle, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1908.
[4] Abdullahi Ɗan Fodio, Diyā’ al-Ḥukkām, Arabic manuscript tradition of the Sokoto Caliphate.
[5] M.G. Smith, Government in Zazzau, 1800–1950, Oxford University Press.
[6] Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-Shar‘iyya; Qadi ‘Iyad, al-Shifā’; al-Qarāfī, al-Furūq.
[7] Nehemia Levtzion & John Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early West African Sources.
[8] Denham & Clapperton, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, 1826.
[9] Murray Last, The Sokoto Caliphate, Longman; also Mervyn Hiskett.
[10] Al-Maghīlī, Risāla ilā Askiyā, and the juristice commentaries of Timbuktu
Prof. Danladi can be reached at adanladi08@gmail.com or (+234) 8039208479.
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