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In the Hausa States, as we have already seen, the Fulani were able
to establish their authority by rapidly overthrowing the old ruling
classes and then taking over from them the established machinery of
government. Among the pagan tribes of Adamawa and Bauchi they faced
a different problem which took a longer time to solve. In Nupe and
llorin the problems were different again and their solution even
more protracted. The acquisition of these areas, which fell in the
period following the death of Shehu,
therefore represented the third phase in the expansion of the
Empire. It was one, moreover, which was associated much more closely
with Gwandu than with Sokoto.
Nupe
The Nupes are quite distinct from the Hausas
and it is not clear why they were ever grouped among the Banza
Bakwai. They speak a language of their own 1
and have never been much penetrated by emigration from Hausaland.
Their links with the Hausa States in fact consisted in little more
than proximity and a similar system of government by a Chief and
aristocracy.
So far as is known the Nupes have always lived around the confluence
of the Niger and Kaduna Rivers. Before the fifteenth century,
however, they had no state of their own but were vassals of the
Igalas, who were themselves subject to Benin and whose capital, Idah,
was a hundred and fifty miles farther down the Niger. Like the
Hausas, they have preserved a legend which attributes the creation
of their kingdom to a half-mythical, half-historical founder or
culture-hero 2.
According to this legend a son of the Atta or Chief of Igala went on a hunting expedition to the country
of the Nupes. There he fell in love with the daughter of a local
chieftain and lived with her for a time. She was pregnant when he
left her to return to Idah and he presented her with a charm and a
ring to give to their child when it was born. The child proved to be
a boy and was called Tsoede or, in the Hausa version, Edegi. When he grew up he was sent to Igala as a slave, part of the
tribute which the Nupes had to pay every year, and there, because of
his ring, he was recognized by his father who in the meantime had
himself become Atta 3.
The Atta, the legend goes on, took Tsoede into his household and
showed him the same favour as his other sons. This evoked the
jealousy of his Igala half-brothers. At length, when the Atta had
grown old and felt the approach of death, he bestowed the
chieftaincy of Nupe on Tsoede and presented him with all the
insignia of office. When his half-brothers got wind of this, they
pursued him, meaning to kill him, but he eluded them and reached
home in safety. There he assumed the title of Etsu Nupe and in about
1530, having subdued the whole country and repudiated his allegiance
to Idah, he became the founder of an independent dynasty. Later he
built the town of Gbara, on the Kaduna River, which was to remain
the capital until the advent of the Fulani three centuries later 4.
While the legend has probably been embellished with the passage of
time, as such myths usually are, the external evidence shows that
there is nothing inherently improbable in it. There was certainly
contact between Nupe and lgala, and it is significant that the
legend of Tsoede has survived in lgala as well as in Nupe. As for
the date, there is a good measure of agreement between different
genealogies on the early sixteenth century.
In any case, whatever its content of historical truth, the legend
was of social significance because it was treasured by the Nupe
people and the general knowledge and acceptance of it was one of the
foundations of the political and cultural unity which they gradually
evolved 5.
There is some uncertainty about when Islam first became established
in Nupe. One tradition is that the fifteenth Etsu, Jibirin, who
lived in the eighteenth century, was the first Moslem of his line 6.
Against this, however, is the fact that a number of Jibirin's
predecessors bore Moslem names 7. On
balance it seems probable that, even if it did not at first gain
much ground, Islam took root at some time during the seventeenth
century.
The date when the Fulani first reached Nupe is also unknown. As the
country provides good grazing in the dry season but is unhealthy for
cattle during the rains because of the prevalence at that season of
the tsetse fly, the probability is that semi-nomadic pastoralists
made their appearance at a very early stage, but that settlement did
not take place till much later and then only on a small scale. Even
by the time of the jihad,one estimate puts the total number of Fulani as low as
1,000-1,500 8.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century there appeared on the
scene a Fulani called Mallam
Dendo. He was a member of the Toronkawa
Clan and until then his home had been in Kebbi. He was a
scholar, not a pastoralist, and he seems to have gone to Nupe as a
preacher and missionary of Islam and to have established himself,
even before the jihad, as a man of influence.
It so happened that at this time the Nupes were divided into two
camps by a dispute about the succession. One pretender, Jimada,
ruled the eastern part of the kingdom from the old capital at Gbara
on the Kaduna River, while the other, Majiya, ruled the west from
the new town of Raba which he had built for himself on the Niger.
This schism gave the Fulani, despite their small numbers, an
opportunity of playing a decisive part 9.
At the start, probably around the turn of the century and before the
outbreak of the jihad, Mallam
Dendo and his supporters allied themselves to Majiya in Raba.
With the help of his Fulani allies Majiya defeated and killed Jimada
and soon afterwards made himself master of all Nupe 10.
With Majiya's triumph Mallam
Dendo became more influential than ever and a fresh wave of
Fulani came to Raba to enter his service. After a time, however,
Majiya seems to have grown jealous of Mallam
Dendo's growing authority. At any rate there was a serious
quarrel and all the Fulani were forced to flee 11.
After being driven out of Raba, Mallam
Dendo crossed the Niger and took refuge with another Fulani, Mallam
Alimi, who had become influential in Ilorin. From there he
espoused the cause of the Nupe faction which he had earlier helped
to defeat. Its leader was now Idirisu, the son of Majiya's dead
rival Jimada. Majiya reacted to this move by taking an army against Mallam
Dendo and Idirisu,
but in the ensuing battle, which took place near florin, he was
decisively defeated, and compelled to fall back upon Raba 12.
There is little doubt that Mallam Dendo now sought and received reinforcements from Shehu.
We know, at any rate, that in 1810, when the war with Gobir was over
and the city of Sokoto was being built, an expedition was sent to
Nupe under Aliyu Jaidu and that it captured many towns 13.
This force seems to have helped Mallam
Dendo to drive Majiya out of Raba and install himself there as Sarkin
Fillani.
From then until his death Mallam Dendo, though not an Emir or even the acknowledged ruler of a
unified state, was the most powerful man in Nupe. His new ally Idirisa
assumed the title of Etsu Nupe, it is true, but continued to live on
the south bank of the Niger and was, in fact, no more than a puppet
ruler. As for Majiya, he had to retire into banishment in the north.
From Raba, Mallam Dendo
was able to play them off against one another and so dominate them
both 14.
This balance of power lasted for twenty years, but in the end, in
about 1830, Idirisu tired of his impotence and rebelled against Mallam
Dendo's authority. He was defeated and killed, however, and Mallam
Dendo then made Majiya the puppet ruler of Nupe in his place
while retaining the real power in his own hands 15.
Before he died Mallam Dendo
is said to have advised his sons to follow in his own footsteps and
to be content with the reality of power without hankering after its
trappings. On his death in 1833 he was succeeded as Sarkin Fillani
by his son Usuman Zaki,
whose mother had been a Fulani and who therefore had no Nupe blood
in him. Soon afterwards Majiya
also died and was similarly succeeded by his son Tsado.
Two years later Tsado rose against the Fulani, but was defeated and
forced to flee 16.
After this victory Usuman Zaki, oblivious of his father's advice,
took over the regalia of the kingdom and himself assumed the title
of Etsu Nupe. These events, which took place in 1836, marked the
extinction of the old Nupe dynasty and the birth of a new Emirate in
the Fulani Empire.
To rule his Emirate, Usuman Zaki introduced the Ajele
system and tried to govern the Nupes through Fulani and Hausa
deputies. This alien regime proved so unpopular, however, that it
soon provoked a new revolt and at the same time introduced a fresh
complication into the already tangled skein of Nupe affairs 17.
Among Usuman Zaki's brothers there was one, Masaba, who had a Nupe
mother. Masaba had quarrelled with Usuman Zaki soon after their
father's death and had left the capital for the countryside. There
he had begun to intrigue against his brother and to propagate the
idea that, as he himself was half Nupe by birth and furthermore had
been brought up as a Nupe, he was the one who should be Emir rather
than the alien Usuman Zaki 18.
asaba and Tsado, the deposed puppet, were companions in mischief and
natural allies. Moreover, the unpopularity of Usuman Zaki's deputies
and the unrest that they provoked gave them the which they had been
looking for. In about 1840, therefore, they organized a rising of
the Nupe population against the Ajeles. This revolt was so
successful that Usuman Zaki's power collapsed completely and he and
his courtiers were compelled to abandon their capital, Raba, and
flee to Agaie in the northeast 19.
It will be remembered that Mallam Dendo had originally come from Kebbi and that, when the
Empire had been divided on the death of Shehu,
Nupe had been included in Abdullahi's sphere of influence. By this
time Halilu, Abdullahi's second son, had succeeded as Emir of Gwandu,
and the news of the revolt brought him hurrying down to Nupe with a
large force behind him. He soon restored peace and his first
inclination was to put Usuman Zaki back on the throne. In the end,
however, he listened to the pleas of his Nupe subjects, who assured
him that the peace would not last unless Masaba became their ruler.
He therefore installed Masaba as Emir and carried Usuman Zaki off
into banishment in Gwandu 20. At first
this move seemed to achieve its object, but in the long term it
meant that the Emirate was to be torn by the quarrels of two Fulani
factions as well as two Nupe factions.
During the 1840s the new Emir Masaba greatly enlarged the boundaries
of the Emirate. He conquered the Kamuku tribe in the north, the
riverain Kakandas in the south, and part of the Gwari people in the
east. Moreover, though he retained Raba as his capital, he
established his power firmly along the south bank of the Niger 21.
In the early 1850s the explorer Barth heard reports in Hausaland
about the great warlike kingdom of Nupe which lay to the south.
In about 1854 Nupe was once again rent by civil war when Umar
Bahaushe, a mercenary captain who had been employed by the
Fulani, revolted against them. For a time he carried everything
before him, drove Masaba out of Raba, and made himself master of the
Emirate. He failed to gain the support of the Nupe population,
however, and succeeded only in uniting the two Fulani factions
against him. With the help of reinforcements from Gwandu, therefore,
he was at length defeated in 1857 and drowned in a river while
trying to escape 22.
After the suppression of Umar's rebellion the Emir of Gwandu
restored Usuman Zaki to the position of Emir and told him to make
his capital at Bida which was nearer the centre of the Emirate than
Raba. Two or three years later, however, in about 1860, Usuman Zaki
died. He was again succeeded by Masaba, who ruled Nupe until he too
died in 1873 23.
But for their internal dissensions it is doubtful whether the Nupe
people would ever have been brought within the Fulani Empire.
The Fulani living among them were certainly too few to seize power
as they had been able to do in the Hausa States while forces
dispatched from the north, which would have had to fight in
conditions unsuited to Fulani methods, would probably have been no
more successful than those sent against Borgu if they had met an
equally united and resolute opposition. As it was, however, the
Nupes by their feuds and rivalries first allowed the far less
numerous Fulani to dominate their affairs and then to seize and
retain power.
In the Hausa States the jihad
had the virtue that it led to a clean-cut victory and resulted, for
the most part, in the rapid restoration of peace. In Adamawa and
Bauchi, religious considerations apart, it could be justified as a
step in the process of taming the wild and predatory tribes who
inhabited the hills. But in Nupe the war brought neither of these
benefits. On the contrary, what had been a simple schism between two
Nupe Pretenders became a complex pattern of intrigue and shifting
alliances between two Nupe and two Fulani factions. The result was
two generations of turbulence and fratricidal strife.
It was not until these feuds had worked themselves out that Nupe was
able to take its proper place as one of the richer and more powerful
States in the Empire. From the time of Masaba's succession its new
regime, represented by an Emir who had a Nupe mother and who called
himself by a Nupe title, took on a character of its own which was
recognizably different from that of the other vassals. In its
devotion to Islam, however, and its loyalty to Gwandu, and through
Gwandu to Sokoto, Nupe was no different from any of the other
Emirates.
Ilorin
There are many similarities between the
processes by which the Fulani established their power in Nupe and
those which led to the creation of the Ilorin Emirate. The only
important difference is that the Nupes, being much less numerous
than the Yorubas, were completely absorbed into the Empire, whereas
in llorin the Fulani succeeded in detaching and assimilating only
one of the many States of Yorubaland.
The Yorubas, like the Nupes and indeed the Hausas, look back to a
mythical founder or culture-hero. This is Oduduwa, who is supposed to have been the son of the ruler of Mecca,
in pre-Islamic days, and to have migrated to the west because of a
quarrel with his father. After many wanderings he is said to have
reached Yorubaland and settled down at Ife. Later, his descendants
spread out and founded the other Yoruba city-states. In the
meantime, according to this legend, two of his brothers, who had
left Arabia at the same time, had become the rulers of the Kanuri
and Gobirawa 24.
There is a marked resemblance between this tradition and the Daura
legend, but the histories of Bornu and Gobir provide even closer
parallels. They, too, preserve the tradition of an origin in Arabia,
as has already been mentioned, and they also recognize a cousinly
relationship between the three peoples. As in Bornu and Gobir the
strangers from the east were apparently sufficiently numerous to
have been accepted as an aristocracy by the people of Yorubaland
among whom they settled. Moreover, the arts and skills that they
brought with them probably made a significant contribution to the
advanced culture and complex structure of society that the Yorubas
were later to develop. On the other hand, the immigrants do not seem
to have been numerous enough to have left any significant ethnic
traces behind them because physically the Arabs and Yorubas are very
different types. Certainly linguistically they made no mark at all,
for the evidence shows Yoruba to be a purely African language 25.
Whatever the precise course of these early events may have
been, the Yorubas undoubtedly multiplied and developed so that in
historical times they emerged as a power to be reckoned with.
Our knowledge of Yorubaland before the eighteenth century derives
more from legend than history. It is generally agreed, however, that
Oyo, which was to become the more powerful of the Yoruba States, had
come into existence by the year 1400 and that its first capital, Old
Oyo, was founded at about that time. The Chief held the title of Alafin and the dynasty claimed that the founder of their line was
the grandson of the mythical Oduduwa.
Oyo gradually grew in strength and authority until it had extended
its sway over the whole of Yorubaland and had become the suzerain of
the petty States which surrounded it. By 1700, when it had just
conquered the neighbouring kingdom of Dahomey, its power was at its
zenith and, with the formerly powerful kingdom of Benin already in
decline, it now dominated the whole region south and west of the
Lower Niger.
In the eighteenth century, however, Oyo began to show signs of
waning. Its military power was based on its cavalry and its
prosperity on the overland trade with the Hausa States. With the
growth of maritime commerce, the overland trade declined in
importance while with the importation of firearms the hitherto
dominant role of cavalry began to diminish. The result of these
changes was that the States on the seaboard grew in stature while in
Old Oyo, situated in the savannah country of the north-east and far
removed from the Atlantic, the Alafins found it increasingly
difficult to control them. It was therefore a sign of the times
when, towards the end of the century, Dahomey refused to pay its
tribute and Egba, another vassal State, threw off its allegiance
altogether.
The Yorubas at this time still adhered to a complex religion of
their own and, although Moslem teachers and missionaries had already
appeared among them, Islam had as yet taken no real root.
Furthermore, because the prevalence of the tsetse fly had kept the
pastoralists at a distance, the Fulani had not penetrated into the
country in any significant numbers. If the way had not been opened
to them, therefore, it is inconceivable that the Fulani could ever
have established themselves as the dominant power in any part of
Yorubaland. As it was, however, the dissensions of the Yorubas among
themselves was to enable them to do just this.
To the south-east of Old Oyo lay the city and district of florin, an
important bastion which was governed by a military commander called Afonja.
It will be remembered that when Mallam
Dendo, the leader of the jihad
in Nupe, had been driven out of Raba it was in Ilorin that he had
taken refuge, probably because Afonja
by this time had already come under the influence of another Fulani
teacher, Mallam Alimi. Be that as it may, the insight that Afonja
then gained into the fighting qualities of the Fulani seems to have
given him the idea of using them himself to further the designs
which he was already harbouring.
From his close association with Mallam Alimi we can assume that by this time Afonja had already become a convert to Islam 26.
This in itself would be enough to weaken his loyalty to the Alafin
of Oyo who still worshipped other gods. In addition he was an
ambitious man who chafed at his vassal status and was eager to
become a Chief in his own right. We know at any rate that, soon
after Afonja had helped
the Nupe Fulani to repel their pursuers, he made a compact with Mallam
Alimi for the recruitment from the north of Fulani and Hausa
volunteers 27. He no doubt persuaded Mallam
Alimi to believe that his aims were to declare a jihad
and establish a Moslem Emirate in Ilorin which would owe allegiance
to Gwandu and Sokoto, but it seems likely that he was in fact
playing a deeper game.
Whether Mallam Alimi had
any doubts about Afonja's
real motives we do not know, but there was no question about the
success of his recruiting, for he attracted to Ilorin large numbers
of Fulani and Hausa volunteers. By 1817, the year of Shehu's
death, Afonja felt
himself to be ready. He therefore threw off his allegiance to the
Alafin and declared Ilorin to be independent of Oyo. The Alafin
immediately reacted by sending a punitive expedition against him,
but, with the help of his Moslem allies, Afonja
defeated it and drove it back 28.
The rebellion of Afonja
in Ilorin was the signal for other vassals to throw off their
allegiance and the rickety Empire of Oyo began to break up. By 1821
the Alafin had lost most of his temporal authority outside
metropolitan Oyo and was no longer strong enough to bring Ilorin or
the other rebels to heel. In Yoruba history this was a development
of the greatest significance, for the removal of Oyo's authority was
to lead to seventy years of civil war.
In Ilorin Afonja kept on
good terms with his Fulani and Hausa allies for just as long as Oyo
remained a suzerain to be feared. When Oyo's power collapsed,
however, and the threat of conquest was removed, he soon fell out
with them. There are two conflicting versions of how this came
about. According to the first, the Fulani and Hausas recruited by
Mallam Alimi, who were known as the jama'a as the early reformers
had been, got out of hand after their victory and started plundering
friendly towns and villages 29. But
according to the second, the fault lay on the other side and it was
the Yorubas who, as soon as the threat from Oyo had been removed,
tried to deny their allies the fruits of victory and drive them out
of the kingdom which they had helped to create 30.
There is probably truth in both these accounts. Among the Fulani and
Hausa volunteers there must have been many adventurers and soldiers
of fortune and it would not be surprising if they were guilty of
some looting and pillage. On the other hand, Afonja's
ruling motive seems to have been personal ambition rather than
devotion to Islam and it would have been in character if, when the
Fulani and Hausas had served their purpose, he had tried to get rid
of them.
Mallam Alimi himself was
a soldier and teacher whose aims were religious rather than
political. While he lived he did his best to keep his followers
under control and his restraining influence on them, combined with
the modesty of his personal aims, seems to have prevented an open
breach. When he died in 1831, however, he was succeeded as leader of
the Moslem group by his son, Abdu
Salami dan Alimi, who was a man of much greater worldly ambition
31.
The succession of Abdu Salami
at once precipitated the crisis which had long been developing in
Ilorin. Afonja no doubt
knew what sort of a man he would now have to deal with and made up
his mind to attack the Fulani and Hausa immigrants and drive them
out of the kingdom altogether. To that end he secretly enlisted the
support of neighbouring Yoruba towns. They failed to provide the
help on which he was counting, however, and the result was that,
when he struck, Abdu Salami
was able to turn the tables on him. Afonja
was killed in the fighting which followed and the Yoruba cause
collapsed 32.
By this victory Abdu Salami
made himself master of Ilorin. Like his father before him, he had
always looked to Gwandu for leadership and protection. In return he
was now presented with a flag and invested with the rank and regalia
of an Emir. The Emirate of florin thus came into being in 1831 as
part of the Dual Empire.
Abdu Salami did not rest
content with the modest domain which he had wrested from Afonja but at once set about enlarging it by making war on his
neighbours. He was generally successful and, though unable to hold
all his gains, won many notable victories against the crumbling
power of Oyo and its warring satellites 33.
The reverses which he suffered at Abdu Salami's hands at length stirred the Alafin to action and he
determined to make a supreme effort to crush what he still regarded
as the rebellion in Ilorin. To this end he not only summoned to arms
his subjects and such vassals as were still loyal but also enlisted
the aid of the neighbouring people of Borgu, who had shown in the
past that they were capable of withstanding the Fulani. In Ilorin, Abdu
Salami got wind of these moves and appealed to Gwandu for help.
Halilu, who in 1835 had succeeded his brother as Emir, responded by
obtaining reinforcements from Sokoto and dispatching a strong
combined force to Abdu Salami's
assistance 34.
In the struggle which followed, the Yorubas and their Borgu allies
won some early successes. They were gradually forced back, however,
and the decisive battle took place near the capital, Old Oyo, in
1837. Its result was an overwhelming victory for the Fulani. The
city was captured, the Alafin killed, and the allied armies routed.
The Borgawa fared no better than the Yorubas and lost their
commander as well as the Chiefs of Kaiama and Wawa 35.
With this defeat the ancient kingdom of Oyo, which had already lost
its Empire, more or less disintegrated. The old capital was never
rebuilt nor did the Alafins ever recover their paramountcy.
Thereafter, Oyo was hardly more than one of the city-states into
which Yorubaland now broke up.
Had the Fulani of the day been as bold and aggressive as those of a
previous generation they would probably have gone on to subdue these
city-states piecemeal and add them to the Empire. By this time,
however, their ambitions were largely satisfied and the tide of
their expansion was almost spent. The year 1837, moreover, was the
one in which Sultan Bello died. They were therefore content to
consolidate their power in Ilorin and did not attempt to exploit
their victory by making further conquests.
One of the results of the defeat of Oyo and the flight of the
Yorubas from the old capital was the founding of Ibadan. The city
grew very rapidly in size and importance and for much of the rest of
the century it was to be at war with Ilorin, barring the way to any
further advance by the Fulani and counter-attacking them whenever
the opportunity offered.
Considering what a small minority the Fulani were, the surprising
fact was not so much that they let pass the opportunity of annexing
the rest of Yorubaland to the Empire but that they managed to
establish themselves in even a corner of it. No less surprising was
the fact that they were afterwards able to maintain their position
among a predominantly Yoruba population when they were all the time
being subjected to heavy pressure from the great mass of the Yoruba
people beyond their borders. This, however, is what they succeeded
in doing. In the process they, too, acquired certain characteristics
which distinguished them from their kinsmen in other parts of the
Empire. But, as with the Nupe Fulani, their local colouring did not
diminish either their devotion to Islam or their loyalty to Gwandu
and through Gwandu to Sokoto.
Notes
1. Greenberg classifies it with Ibo and Yoruba in a section of the
Niger-Congo group of his Congo-Kordofanian family (op. cit. p. 8).
2. S. F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium, London, 1942, pp. 72-74.
3. Ibid.
4. Nadel, op. cit.
5. Ibid. pp. 75-76.
6. Ibid. p. 76.
7. Gazetteer of Nupe Province, 1920, p. 8.
8. Nadel, op. cit. p. 77.
9. Nadel, op. cit. p. 77.
10. Ibid. pp, 77-73.
11. Ibid. p. 78.
12. Ibid. pp. 78-79
13. Bello, Inf M (Arnett, p. 99).
14. Nadel, op, cit. p. 71).
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid. p. 80.
17. Gazetteer of Nupe Province, p. 11.
18. Nadel, op. cit. p. 80.
19. Gazetteer of Nupe Province, p. 11.
20. Ibid. p. 12.
21. Nadel, op. cit. p. 80.
22. Ibid. pp. 80-82.
23. Gazetteer of Nupe Province, pp. 14-17.
24. Samuel Johnson, History of the Yorubas, London, 1921, pp. 3-4.
25. Greenberg classifies it in the same section of the Niger-Congo
group as Nupe. (op. cit. p. 8.)
26. Confirmed by Alhaji Junaidu.
27. Gazetteer of Ilorin Province, 1921, p. 15.
28. Gazetteer of Ilorin Province, p. 16.
29. Hogben and Kirk-Greene, op. cit. p. 287.
30. Gazetteer of Ilorin Province, p. 16.
31. Hogben and Kirk-Greene, op. cit. pp. 287-8.
32. Ibid. p. 289.
33. Gazetteer of Ilorin Province, p. 16.
34. Ibid. pp. 38-39.
35. Hogben and Kirk-Greene, op. cit. p. 291.
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