Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
98. Resistance and Reform - Uthman Dan Fuduye of Nigeria – Part 1
By Prof DrNazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Uthman Dan Fuduye, statesman, reformer, scholar and religious teacher, emerged out of the great reform waves rolling across the Muslim world in the latter part of the 18th century.
Shehu (meaning Shaykh) Uthman was the son of Fuduye Muhammad whose forefathers were members of the Torobe clan of the Fulani people. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Fulani inhabited the vast grasslands between the Sahara and the dense tropical jungles of Africa. They tended their sheep and cattle and depended on the natural bounty of the land for their food. Among them were many scholars who provided the backbone of the religious tradition in the great and Songhay empires. Rainfall was sparse, about fifteen inches a year and the search for pastures produced periodic migrations. The Fulani migrated gradually from western Africa to their modern day stronghold in northern Nigeria.
Linguistically, the Fulani language has its basis in Bantu with a strong overlay of Arabic. Trade links across the Sahara tied the Sudan to the Maghrib, and there was considerable mixing between the Bantu, Berber, Arab and other Islamic peoples in West Africa. In a process similar to that in the Sahel of East Africa and the Malabar Coast of India, it produced a rich amalgam of culture, language, lineage and heritage.
The Fulani traced their lineage from Uqba bin Nafi, the renowned conqueror of North Africa (d. 683). Shehu Uthman Dan Fuduye was therefore a descendent of Uqba bin Nafi from his father’s side. On his mother’s side, he was a Sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet. His mother, Sayyadatu Hawwa was in the lineage of al Hassan, son of Fatima binte Prophet Muhammed (p).
The western Sudan was closer to the intellectual centers of North Africa than the hinterland, and it was here that the reform waves that rolled across West Africa were born. In the 11th century this area produced the Murabitun movement, which spread throughout the western Sudan, North Africa and Spain. The movement of the Sinhaja and other tribes across the Sahara provided the medium for transmission of ideas. The Qadariya Sufi order, originating in Baghdad, soon spread to all parts of the Islamic world. Traders who plied the Sahara introduced it into West Africa in the 14th and 15th centuries. Soon, it planted itself on African soil and provided the most effective means for the spread of Islam. Since the Fulani were so widespread, they were among the first people in West Africa to come into contact with new ideas from the north. The Sufis established zawiyas, provided a structure for the propagation of faith, taught the Qur’an and Sunnah, trained teachers and dedicated workers, provided social services and acted as a defensive umbrella in times of war.
Sufic Islam, which had spread in Persia, India and Indonesia in the 14th and 15th centuries, now found a home in Africa. The Fulani were among the first people to embrace this new vision of Islam. From West Africa, the Sufi tareeqas were carried by the Fulani into the interior and beyond the bend in the Niger River into what is today northern Nigeria. Scholarship and their knowledge of Islam made the Fulani welcome into various kingdoms then existing in West Africa. By 1775, Fulani mallams formed the backbone of the religious establishment in the entire West African belt. The strict interpretations of the Maliki School of fiqh sometimes brought them into conflict with the local emirs who ruled using a mixture of Islamic law and animist customs to suit the local conditions.
In the latter part of the 18th century, another Sufi order, the Tijaniya was founded in Morocco. From there it spread southward into areas inhabited by the Sinhaja who carried it to the Sene-Gambia regions. The Tijaniya were more assertive than the Qadariya in spreading the faith and their approach found many adherents among the youth who were impatient with the slow and deliberate approach of the Qadariya order. These two orders, the Qadariya and the Tijaniya, were the spiritual force behind the revival of Islam in the Sudan.
The political convulsions of the 16th and 17th centuries had a direct impact on the migrations of people and the evolution of culture and religion in West Africa. In 1592, Maulay Ahmed of the Sa’adid dynasty in Morocco sent his army south towards the Empire of Songhay. What had started as a border clash to control the salt mines at Taghaza and Taodeni mushroomed into a full-scale invasion. Armed with muskets and cannon, the invading forces wreaked havoc on the river cities of West Africa. The great trading centers of Timbuktu, Gao and Jenne were occupied and considerable damage was inflicted on the cities. The Songhay Emperor, Askia Ishaq, retreated eastward to his ancestral homeland. With the retreating armies went many of the scholars from Timbuktu, Gao and Jenne. These scholars provided added momentum to the spread of Islam in the southern reaches of the Niger River, which are located today in Niger and northern Nigeria.
The social dislocations caused by the war destroyed the power of the cities and increased the importance of the villages. Along with the migration of scholars from Songhay to Hausa and Fulani areas, there was a movement of marabouts, the wandering minstrels, who proved to be the active element in the transport of Islamic ideas to the hinterland. The marabouts, equally learned in Shariah and tareeqa, established local religious centers. Conversion to Islam picked up momentum. To the southeast, beyond the bend in the Niger River, Fulani merchants were equally successful in propagating the faith. Hitherto, Islam had been primarily the religion of the rulers and of the ruling aristocracy in West Africa. Now, it became a religion of the masses. The new entrants to the faith brought with them their traditions and culture much as the people of India and Indonesia had brought theirs into the Islamic fold 300 years earlier. The confluence of ancestral African religious customs and orthodox Islamic doctrines was the matrix from which emerged the reform movements of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The disintegration of the Songhay Empire was a political bonanza for the Fulani and Hausa people who lived beyond the bend of the Niger River. The Hausa-Fulani were skillful merchants and accomplished artisans and they lived in areas where agriculture thrived. They were under constant military pressure from Songhay but had never united or organized themselves to resist the Songhays. With the threat of armed invasion receding, and Songhay under Moroccan military control, they were able to set an independent course for themselves. In 1629 one of the Fulani chiefs Ardo broke away from Moroccan dominated Songhay. Similar moves for independence by other Fulani tribes followed in the succeeding decades. In 1690 several Fulani states emerged in the Messina plains in northwest Nigeria and southern Niger. Around 1790, one of the marabouts, Shaykh Alfa Muhammed Diobo, founded the city of Say. This city which is located today at the border between Nigeria and Niger, became the nucleus for political movement and religious revival in the Hausa-Fulani areas.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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