THE JIHAD OF SHAYKH USMAN DAN FODIO AND
ITS IMPACT BEYOND THE SOKOTO CALIPHATE - 3

[Background]   [Impact Beyond the Caliphate:Borno]  [Masina ]    [Senegambia ]   [Nile valley ]   [African Diaspora in the Carribean ]   [Factors Facilitating Spread:Conclusion ]  MASINA Masina, in contemporary Mali, was located to the west of Hausaland and like many polities in the region, had its fair share of Shehu’s students as well as the decadence in Hausaland. Ahmad Labbo, one of these students of Shehu Usman, took up the challenge. Ahmad appear to have been profoundly influenced by the Shehu, even as they never met physically. For Ahmad’s major and perhaps only work, titled, al-Idtirar ila Allah fi Ikhmad ba’ad ma Tuqad min al-Bid’a wa Ihya’ ba’ad ma andarasa min al-Sunnah, was in both content and style similar to Shaykh Usman’s Bayan Bid’i Shaytaniyya. Ahmad was clearly impressed with Shaykh Usman’s arguments and liked quoting him at every opportunity. Ahmad had all along been in correspondence with the leadership of the movement in Sokoto, especially Shaykh Abdullahi b. Fodio, Shehu Usman’s younger brother. But between 1815 to 1816 this contact intensified as Ahmad Labbo sought and received legal as well as moral support from the leadership of the Jama’a in his struggle against the ulama’ and the ruling class in Masina. Barely two years after writing al-Idtirar, in which he sought to establish a strong case against the ulama’ in Masina, Shaykh Ahmad run into conflict with the local rulers, the Ardoen, who under the instigation of the local ulama’, called in the neighbouring, more powerful, but, pagan Bambara rulers to deal with him. Having obtained Shehu Usman’s permission in 1817, Seku Ahmadu, as Ahmad Labbo came to be known, started his jihad. By the following year, Seku Ahmadu had overthrown the yoke of the Bambara state of Segu and their surrogates and went ahead to establish an Islamic state made up of five emirates administered centrally by a council of forty, from the capital, Hamdullahi. The influence of Shaykh Usman was naturally not restricted to Seku Ahmadu alone, for in the routine administration of the state, it was reported that Seku Ahamdu had difficulty in carrying his council with him until he could quote from the Ihya’ al-Sunnah of Shaykh Usman. In fact Seku Ahmadu was considered so much part of Shaykh Usman’s enterprise that when Muhammad Bello took over the Caliphate following the demise of the Shaykh in 1817, Bello demanded bay’a from Seku Ahamdu. The Seku, however, drew Bello’s attention to Shaykh Abdullahi Fodio’s fatwah in Diya’ al-Hukkam, which justifies the existence of two imams in a territory which is so large as to render it ungovernable. Thus though Shehu never set his foot in Masina, yet his bidding was done, and Masina, very much like Shehu’s Hausaland turned a new Islamic leaf.