The Sokoto Caliphate Consolidated

About a decade after the jihad of 1804, the Sokoto Caliphate founded by the Fulani scholar Usman dan Fodio (rahimahu Allah), the Shehu, had passed from a movement of reform into a settled state, and by around 1815 it was being consolidated under his son and eventual successor Muhammad Bello (rahimahu Allah) from the new capital that gave the caliphate its name, the town of Sokoto, laid out about 1809. The caliphate was organised as a confederation of emirates across Hausaland and beyond, each emir confirmed by the caliph and bound to him, with judges appointed to apply the law of the Maliki school, revenue gathered as zakat and the land taxes, and chains of frontier ribats settling and securing the borders. What distinguished Sokoto was that its rulers were scholars: the Shehu, his brother Abdullahi dan Fodio and his son Muhammad Bello (rahimahum Allah) between them wrote hundreds of works on jurisprudence, governance, the conduct of rulers, theology and the Sufi path, and a manuscript culture flourished in Arabic and in Hausa and Fulfulde written in Arabic script. Abdullahi's manual for judges and the Shehu's writings on just rule set out the ideals the administration was meant to serve, even where practice fell short of them. The state grew into one of the largest in nineteenth-century Africa and would endure until the British conquest of 1903. People read and write beside books and papers in an earthen courtyard. Nearby cloth, baskets and goods connect administration and learning with market life; particular taxes or judicial rulings cannot be read.