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On Shehu's
death in 1817 the Empire, which for some time had, in effect, been
divided into two parts and governed separately by Bello
and Abdullahi, was
formally partitioned between Sokoto, and Gwandu. In Sokoto,
therefore, Bello succeeded as the second Sarkin
Musulmi and the first Sultan.
The accounts of Bello
that have survived give us a fair idea of his appearance and
bearing. The explorer Clapperton,
when he met him eight years later, described him as a noble-looking
man, forty-four years of age although much younger in appearance,
five feet ten inches high, portly in person, with a short curling
beard, a small mouth, a Grecian nose, and large black eyes 1.
Another eye-witness, who was probably speaking of him in a later
period of life, said that, though beginning to go bald, he had a
thick beard and a ruddy complexion and that when he appeared in
public he was always veiled, in the Tuareg manner, with a fold of
his turban drawn across the lower part of his face 2.
To the office of Waziri, or chief minister, Bello appointed Usuman Gidado,
a man appreciably older than himself who had become his
brother-in-law when Shehu's
daughter Nana, who
incidentally was the
outstanding woman of her day, had been given to him in marriage.
Gidado also belonged to
the Toronkawa Clan and from the start
had been one of Shehu's most devoted adherents. The picture of him which emerged
from Clapperton's journal is of a civilized and kindly man with whom
the explorer was able to strike up a real friendship. His wisdom and
mature judgement certainly formed the perfect foil for Bello's zest and vigour and together they made a formidable
combination.
The heritage into which Bello
now entered was a troubled one. First of all there was the
difficulty of his estrangement from his uncle Abdullahi
who retired in hurt silence to Gwandu. Shortly after this there came
news that many of the Zamfara, and Burmi towns, on hearing of Shehu's
death, had renounced their allegiance 3. And
finally, most disturbing of all, there were soon to be signs of
disloyalty, perhaps even treason, among some of his own closest
followers.
It will be recalled that the episode which precipitated the jihad
was Yunfa's attack on Abdu
Salami and his followers in the town of Gimbana. Abdu
Salami, as has already been mentioned, was one of the few men
among the more prominent of Shehu's
original supporters who was not himself a Fulani. His paternal
forebears had, in fact, been Arabs who had settled among the Arewa
people and he himself was therefore of mixed blood 4.
When Shehu had fled to
Gudu and raised his standard, Abdu
Salami had gone with him and his followers had played a
significant part in the subsequent fighting. When victory was won he
had been rewarded for his services by being given the fief of Kwarre,
a town of some size and importance fifteen miles north of Sokoto,
and he had thereupon taken up residence there as its feudal lord 5.
Though the fief of Kwarre was far from negligible, Abdu Salami was dissatisfied with it and felt that it was not
commensurate either with his previous standing or with the services
which he had rendered in the jihad.
— And I, Abdu Salami,
he wrote to Belle, where then is my portion? It seems to me that
what I rule now is no greater than what I ruled before, that is to
say a place to farm and a place to be buried in 6.
His dissatisfaction led him into intrigue and mischief-making and
even while Shehu was
still alive he was guilty of disloyalty, if not worse. For this he
was summoned to Sokoto and admonished 7.
It was only after Shehu's
death, however, that the resentment which he felt against the Fulani
leaders showed itself in open insubordination. When Bello
became Sultan, he alone among the great feudatories failed to go to
Sokoto to do homage. Ignoring the insult, Bello
sent him a conciliatory message inviting him to come and repair his
omission which he eventually did. A brush was thus averted, at any
rate for the time being, but his hostility persisted 8.
This quarrel would have been much less serious if it had not been
for widespread revolts in the east of the Sultanate where dissident
Zamfarawa, Katsinawa, and Burmawa, under the leadership of Banaga
dan Bature, had risen against the Fulani 9.
Despite warnings from Sokoto, Abdu
Salami persisted in trading and having other dealings with the
rebels. Bello continued
to show him great forbearance, but it was all in vain. The recent
division of the Empire between Sokoto and Gwandu probably led him to
believe that it was going to break up and encouraged him to think
that he could assert his independence. This at any rate is what he
now tried to do 10.
Bello wrote further
letters to him in the hope of bringing him back to his duty, but
these were ignored. It was then discovered that he was in
treasonable correspondence with the Zamfara rebels and so Bello
at last decided that he would have to use force. Kwarre was invested
and early in the year 1818, after a siege of five months, taken by
storm. Abdu Salami succeeded in escaping, but he had been wounded in the
fighting and he died of his wounds soon afterwards 11.
Having disposed of Abdu
Salami, Bello next
turned on his ally, Banaga dan Bature, who in the meantime had
sacked Gusau and other towns in the eastern part of the Sultanate.
First, Banaga's own town
of Morai, near Talata Mafara, was captured; then the Katsinawa of
Kanoma were overcome and their hill-fortress occupied; finally,
Banaga himself was defeated and killed near Bungudu 12.
After Abdu Salami's death
some of his followers dispersed, but the hard core, under the
leadership of his son Buhari, migrated to the south where, after a
period of wandering, they took possession of the fortified town of
Kalembaina in Gwandu. As Abdullahi
was unable to dislodge them from there, he appealed to his nephew
for help. Bello responded at once and himself led a column against the rebels.
He joined forces with Abdullahi
in front of Kalembaina and together they stormed the place 13.
Although, as we shall see, Bello
and Abdullahi disagreed
about the nature of the offence which Abdu
Salami and his followers had committed, the joint action at
Kalembaina was the occasion of their formal reconciliation. When
they met outside the town, Bello
as the younger man prepared to dismount and go over to greet his
uncle, but Abdullahi motioned to him to remain in the saddle and himself leant
forward and greeted his nephew as Sarkin
Musulmi 14. This magnanimity was
characteristic of both men and it healed the breach which had opened
between them after Shehu's
death.
While these events were taking place in the central Sudan,
arrangements were being made in Europe that were to result in the
first breach being made in the physical barriers which had hitherto
prevented any direct intercourse.
In the history of geography there has always been a tendency to
concentrate on one problem at a time. In the latter part of the
eighteenth century, Cook's voyage to the South Seas had cleared up
the mystery of Australia and the interest of the civilized world had
then switched to Africa. To promote the exploration of the interior
of the continent, about which little or nothing was known, the
African Association was formed in London and a series of expeditions
were launched.
Attention at this time was focused not on the Nile, whose source
Bruce was thought to have discovered, but on the more mysterious
Niger. The first two expeditions ended in failure and the death of
the explorers. In the third expedition a resolute young Scotsman
called Mungo Park reached the Upper Niger and established the fact,
which had previously been in doubt, that it flowed from west to
cast. But when Park went back early in the nineteenth century, to
try to sail down the river to its mouth, he too perished.
After the end of the Napoleonic wars the African Association resumed
its attempts to explore West Africa and solve the riddle of where
the Niger flowed into the sea. In this task it received the
encouragement of the British Government, which was concerned to find
new outlets for trade generally and particularly for the
manufactured goods which, thanks to the industrial revolution, Great
Britain was now producing in ever-increasing quantities. After
further failures, an expedition set out from Tripolitania in 1822,
which was to be at least partially successful. It was led by a naval
surgeon called Oudney and its members were two other half-pay
officers, Clapperton and Denham, and a shipwright named Hillman, who
was supposed to build a boat when the party reached its destination.
This expedition, escorted by a force of Arabs provided by the Pasha
of Tripoli, crossed the Sahara and reached Bornu in safety. There
they split up and Oudney, accompanied by Clapperton, set off for
Hausaland. Oudney died on the way, but Clapperton pushed on alone
and at length, on 16 March 1824, reached the city of Sokoto. He was
the first European ever to do so and a great multitude turned out to
see him.
Hugh Clapperton, the son of a good family from the Scottish border,
was a born adventurer. At the age of thirteen he had gone to sea in
a merchantman and soon afterwards had transferred to the Royal Navy.
During the Napoleonic wars he had served in three different theatres
and at one time or another had been wounded in Spain, almost
captured by the Americans on the Canadian Lakes, and very nearly
drowned in the Atlantic. He was now in the prime of life, tough,
daring, and remarkably handsome. As an explorer he may have lacked
Barth's inquiring mind and tireless attention to detail, but he
possessed other qualities, namely an observant eye, a sardonic sense
of humour, and a ready pen.
Clapperton was lodged in the house of Gidado,
the Waziri, and on the following day he was taken to the palace for
his first audience with the Sultan. Bello
made Clapperton heartily welcome and the two men took to one another
from the start.
On this first visit Clapperton spent seven weeks in Sokoto and in
all was received in audience thirteen times. The main business
discussed at these meetings was how to open a channel of
communication to Hausaland and, arising out of that, the possibility
of a British Consul and a European physician being stationed in
Sokoto. The Sultan came back to the subject over and over again and
it is clear that his desire to establish links with the outside
world was both strong and perfectly genuine 15.
The record of these interviews shows that Bello
was a man of great intellectual curiosity and, considering how
completely the central Sudan was then sealed off by desert and
forest from the western world, that he was also very well informed
on a surprisingly wide range of subjects. He confounded Clapperton,
for example, by inquiring whether the British were Nestorians or
Socinians and then went on to ask such probing questions on other
theological subjects that the honest explorer had to confess that he
was out of his depth. Similarly, among the presents which Clapperton
brought it was the telescope and compass that aroused his greatest
interest and later he asked for a special demonstration of how a
sextant worked. In the course of this he showed that he knew many of
the stars by their Arabic names and some of the constellations as
well. At another audience he asked about the ancient Greeks and
later taxed Clapperton with the fact that the British had conquered
India and recently been at war with Algiers. He had heard about
European newspapers and made Clapperton bring one which he had in
his baggage so that he could read extracts from it 16.
From Clapperton's narrative we catch a few glimpses of life at the
Sultan's court and it is evident that it still retained much of the
simplicity of Shehu's
day. Bello himself was plainly dressed in a blue cotton gown and white
muslim turban. The palace was only lightly guarded and on one
occasion the usher who conducted Clapperton to the Sultan's inner
apartment was no courtier but an old slave-woman. The apartment
itself, which consisted of a square room with a vaulted ceiling
supported on eight ornamental arches, was handsome but far from
luxurious. As for the Waziri Gidado, his interest seemed to be
mainly centred upon his family and the new mosque that he was
building 17.
When Clapperton and Denham returned to England in 1825, the account
of their discoveries caused something of a sensation. Throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the British had been more
heavily engaged in the maritime slave-trade than any other nation.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, they had undergone a
change of heart and were by this time as active in trying to prevent
the traffic as they had been earlier in promoting it.
When the British Government studied the reports of Clapperton and
Denham, they thought they saw a golden opportunity of pursuing in
the central Sudan their now thoroughly respectable policy of
suppressing the slave-trade and replacing it by legitimate commerce.
For once, therefore, they moved with unusual speed and decision. A
new expedition, with Clapperton as its leader, was quickly fitted
out and dispatched. Among its members were the Consul and the
physician for whom Bello
had specifically asked.
Clapperton's second expedition followed a different route from the
first and, after landing in the Bight of Benin, they planned to
march north to Hausaland. Within three months, however, five of the
seven Europeans, including the Consul and the physician, had
succumbed to the climate. Only Clapperton and his servant, a young
Cornishman called Richard Lander, struggled through to Sokoto, which
they reached towards the end of 1826.
At the time of Clapperton's
earlier visit, relations between Bornu and Sokoto had been good and Bello,
in conversation, had gone out of his way to refer to El-Kanemi as his friend 18. In 1825,
however, war had broken out again and by the time that Clapperton
returned to Hausaland the whole political climate had changed. It
was now El-Kanemi who had
become the aggressor and it was the turn of the Fulani to await in
some trepidation the invasion that he was known to be preparing 19.
Early in the year 1827 El-Kanemi,
at the head of a great army, at length crossed the border and began
advancing on Kano. Katagum, the first of the Fulani Emirates to be
invaded, was unable to offer any effective resistance. The common
people no doubt fled from the path of the invaders and the men who
could bear arms probably fell back on Kano. In Kano Emirate an
attempt was made to stem the invasion, but the forces which had been
collected for the purpose did not make a very determined stand and
were easily brushed aside. If El-Kanemi
had now pressed on with speed and determination he might well have
captured the city before the Emir of Kano had had time to make
another stand. As it was, however, he may have been conscious of the
fact that by advancing to the west he was creating a long southern
flank and exposing it to counter-attack from Bauchi and Adamawa. At
any rate, instead of advancing rapidly he seems to have dallied in
the Dutse area of eastern Kano.
On the other side the Fulani had no illusions about the magnitude of
the threat which faced them. When the news of El-Kanemi's
advance into Kano reached Sokoto, the Sultan showed the greatest
concern and immediately ordered the Waziri to go to the front and
take supreme command. What the Fulani particularly feared was that
the invasion would bring the Tuaregs out against them and that the
Hausa population would rise and join the diehards who were already
in open rebellion 20. The crisis was
easily the greatest that they had had to face since the end of the jihad
and in Sokoto the next three weeks were a time of the most acute
anxiety.
Bello had already sent
letters to all the Emirs in the east ordering them to mobilize their
forces and oppose El-Kanemi's
advance. When this message reached Yakubu,
Emir of Bauchi, he happened to have an army in the field against the
pagans. Although he could muster no more than 2,500 horsemen, far
less than the great host of Bornu, he immediately led his forces
north to intercept El-Kanemi in Kano 21.
When Yakubu made contact with the Bornu army, the Waziri of Sokoto
had not yet arrived in the east to coordinate and take command of
the Fulani forces. Yakubu therefore had to decide for himself
whether to risk a battle or to wait with the object of joining up
with contingents from other Emirates. He consulted his chief
advisers, but they would not commit themselves. Yakubu's
inclination, however, was obviously to attack.
— I know not how to defeat El-Kanemi,
he said, ‘neither do I know how to slay him, but one thing I do
know. I know that he has no power to raise the dead; that he has no
power, if rain be lacking, to make it fall; that he has no power, if
the grass does not spring up, to cause it to grow.
To this Yakubu's followers replied by saying that these were things
which only God could do.
— As you know this, said Yakubu, we shall take courage and fight
with El-Kanemi and we
shall defeat him and kill him, for all power resides in God 22.
The ensuing battle took place in the second week of February 1827,
and was fought at Fake in eastern Kano. Although the Bauchi army was
greatly inferior in cavalry, it was very strong in archers. The
archers, moreover, had a secret poison for putting on their
arrowheads which was so potent that it was known as Kare Dangi, a
name that implied that it did not just kill individuals but
destroyed whole families. As at Tabkin Kwatto, therefore, the battle
resolved itself into a struggle between heavy cavalry and lightly
armed archers.
In the first clash the Bornu cavalry had the better of it and the
Madaki Hassan, who had been in operational command, was killed. The
Kanuri believed that they had killed Yakubu himself and were elated
at their success while the Fulani were equally dismayed. When Yakubu
heard this he determined to take command himself and so, surrounded
by his bodyguard, he hurled himself into the fight 23.
The battle was fought in the middle of the dry season and all
accounts of it speak of the great cloud of dust which rose up and
enveloped the combatants. Yakubu was quick to see that it gave his
archers a tactical advantage and his exploitation of this
opportunity proved decisive.
When the two armies met, nothing
could be heard but the clash of arms. The battle grew fierce and the
dust rose up so high that none could see his neighbour. The day
waxed dark. At this Yakubu gave orders to his bowmen, saying
— Shoot into the murk! Shoot into the murk.
So the Fulani kept shooting into the murk until the enemy gave way 24.
Seeing the day beginning to go against him, El-Kanemi ordered a retirement. His object was probably to extricate
his troops from an unfavourable position and then return to the
attack. The retirement turned into a retreat, however, and the
retreat soon became a rout. The Fulani were not only left in
possession of the field but captured the enemy camp and with it a
mass of booty. The Kanuri lost over two hundred horses, all their
baggage, and even their flag and drums 25.
So severe was the defeat at Fake that El-Kanemi
marched back to Bornu and abandoned his plan of recovering the lost
provinces of Hausaland.
It was Clapperton's misfortune that his second expedition became
embroiled in these events. When he returned to Sokoto in the autumn
of 1826 he found the Fulani leaders preoccupied with the Bornu war
and worried by the attacks of the Gobir and Kebbi diehards which the
war had provoked. At first his relations with Bello
were as cordial as ever, but as soon as Bello
heard that he intended to go on from Sokoto and visit Bornu a shadow
came over them. The Sultan said that such a visit would give aid and
comfort to his enemies and absolutely refused to permit it. The
explorer, on the other hand, insisted that he must pay the visit
because he had been commissioned to do so and refused to acknowledge
that the Sultan had any right to stop him. Both parties remained
adamant and the differences between them, which their Arab
intermediaries may well have fomented, quickly developed into a
serious quarrel 26.
The truth is that there was right on both sides. Clapperton, whose
health was rapidly deteriorating, felt that as he had only returned
to Sokoto on Bello's own
pressing invitation, he was the victim of a breach of faith in not
being allowed to fulfil his commission. He refused to accept Bello's
assessment of the effect that it would have on public opinion if he
were to leave Sokoto at such a critical phase of the war and make
his way to Bornu. As for Bello,
although he may have allowed the Arabs to play too much on his
fears, he was obviously perfectly sincere in believing that to allow
Clapperton to go to Bornu might help the enemy and jeopardize the
Fulani cause 27.
While the war lasted neither Bello
nor Clapperton would budge and relations between them became very
strained. Yakubu's victory at Fake, however, and the collapse of El-Kanemi's invasion, immediately produced a change for the better.
Clapperton's journal records the intense relief with which the news
was greeted in Sokoto 28. Some of the
spoils of war were put on show in the city, including a copper
vessel which had belonged to El-Kanemi
himself, and the celebrations lasted right through the night. In
this new atmosphere Bello
and Clapperton were reconciled. Unhappily, however, Clapperton
collapsed on the very next day and a month later he was dead 29.
In Europe, if not in Africa, the death of Clapperton has cast a
shadow on the estimation in which Bello
has hitherto been held. This is less than just, for Bello never detained Clapperton, as has sometimes been supposed, but
always made it clear that he was free to go home by any other route
provided that he abandoned the idea of visiting Bornu 30.
In the face of a supreme crisis in the affairs of the Empire this
condition was not unreasonable and Bello
can be acquitted of blame for imposing it.
Notes
1. Clapperton, Travels, vol. II, pp. 332-3.
2. Hajji Said, An Arab History of Sokoto translated by C. E. J.
Whitting, Journal of the Royal African Society, no. 188. The term
‘ruddy complexion’ probably mean the reddish copper colour which
is common among the Fulani.
3. Alhaji Junaidu, op. cit. p. 26.
4. Gwandu DNBs, History of Jega.
5. Bello, SK (LHdM, vol.
I, p. 21).
6. Ibid. p. 28.
7. Ibid. p. 20.
8. Ibid. p. 22.
9. Sokoto DNBs, Histories of Bakura, Mam, and Gusau.
10. Bello, SK (LHdM, vol.
I, pp. 22-23).
11. Ibid. pp. 23-35.
12. Sokoto DNBs, Histories of Mam and Gusau. Muhammadu Dadi, a
Fulani who played a prominent part in these events, was rewarded
with the title of Banaga
13. Hiskett, Introduction to TW, pp. 18-20.
14. Hiskett, Introduction to TW, pp. 18-20.
15. Clapperton, Travels, vol. II, pp. 330-76.
16. Travels, vol. II, Clapperton, pp. 330-76.
17. Ibid.
18. Clapperton, Travels, vol. II, p. 351.
19. On 28 March 1824 the Bornu army won a crushing victory at Ngala
and so put an end to the war with Baghirmi, which had been going on
since about 1817. With the removal of this threat to his rear, El-Kanemi
seems to have decided to take the offensive against the Fulani with
the object of recovering the suzerainty of Hausaland. Certainly, he
told Denham a few months later that he expected his influence in
Hausaland to increase shortly and extend to Nupe. See Denham,
Travels, vol. II, pp. 37-39 and 85.
20. Clapperton, Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of
Africa, London, 1829, p. 243.
21. Unpublished Manuscript about the Emirs of Bauchi written by
Mallam Mustafa who was tutor to Yakubu's sons.
22. Ibid.
23. Alhaji Mahmud, A Light for Learners and a Lamp for the Blind, an
unpublished Manuscript, written about 1950 and based on older
material.
24. Alhaji Mahmud, op. cit.
25. Ibid.
26. Clapperton, Journal, pp. 192-252.
27. Clapperton, Journal, pp. 192-252.
28. Ibid. p. 252.
29. Ibid. pp. 252-76.
30. Ibid. pp. 192-252.
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