Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
The Captain and the Sergeant
Sokoto
February 1842
Captain John Alexander was more impressed with Paulo Abacar than otherwise. Part of it, no doubt, was the sheer joy of hearing English spoken in the middle of a heathen wilderness - appallingly accented and rusty from disuse, but English nonetheless. And part of it was that Paulo knew his father, an infantry major who’d been seconded as a colonel in the Portuguese army during the Peninsular War and had briefly commanded the Malê leader’s regiment. Paulo had never spoken to the man, but remembered and respected the name, and treated the son like a long-lost relation.
“Is the Colonel still alive?” he asked.
“Yes, and my mother too. They’re home now - he sold up his commission eight years ago, the same time he bought mine. We have a manor in Dorset, and he makes his own blackberry brandy.”
“Can’t have that here,” Paulo said, his face betraying a smile.
“Then you’ll have to come visit,” said the captain, and to his surprise, he meant it. Because the third part of it was that, wherever he may have come from, Paulo Abacar was a man who commanded respect.
I may have come here for a reason after all, John thought. He’d been sent to Sokoto with only the vaguest mission - find out what had happened here, and what was likely to happen. Sokoto was a long way from any of Britain’s African possessions, but wars in one place could lead to wars in others, and if any British interests were at risk, the army needed to know. And on the promise side of the equation, there were rumors that the new state was as dedicated to suppressing the slave trade as the Royal Navy was. The Navy could interdict slave ships, and the commissioners in the port cities did their best to discourage their kings from doing business with the slavers, but the middleman kingdoms in the interior were out of reach. If the rumors were true, then these kingdoms might suddenly have cause to fear.
And within minutes of meeting Sokoto’s ruler, John Alexander had no doubt that that the rumors were true. When Paulo wasn’t exchanging family pleasantries, his thoughts were never far from God, and to him, God was never far from freedom.
Afterward, they’d gone from the assembly-field through the polyglot Malê quarter, to the old palace that was now the headquarters of the army and the government. Paulo entertained him to dinner that night - fufu and chicken in the Brazilian style - in the company of Amilcar Said, his chief of staff, and João Silva, the finance minister. Two others were there as well: Paulo’s wife Aisha, nursing eight-month-old Usman, and the old shehu’s daughter and informal education minister, the Nana Asma’u. Aisha, even younger than the captain, was shy and avoided his gaze; the Nana regarded him as appraisingly as any of his commanding officers ever had.
The table talk was of the army, and the recruitment of literate women for the Nana’s jaji teaching corps, and finally the reorganization of the government. Paulo wanted to expand and formalize the governing council that had grown up since the conquest: a representative for each town, two for each city, others for the army, the merchants and the Islamic schools, each constituency selecting its representatives as it saw fit. The council would meet in public, in the assembly-field where the citizens could make their views known.
“Shura,” Paulo explained. “Consultation. The ruler must consult with the ruled. Even the Prophet took counsel with the believers. How would we know we are right, unless we debate in the people’s sight and hear their voices?”
“What if the people oppose something you consider vital?”
“Then I must look to my conscience.”
That was typical of Paulo, the captain had noticed. The Malê had educated himself, found a life’s work and discovered a genius for persuading men, but in may ways he still had a sergeant’s view of the world: get himself and his men through this battle, and let the next one take care of itself. He was the despair of Silva - one of the rare slaves who’d been educated as a clerk in Brazil, and as fussy as any chartered accountant in London - and, John suspected, the true strategic minds in the room belonged to Said and the Nana.
To be sure, Paulo knew what he needed - he was a sergeant in that respect as well. He needed guns and soldiers. He needed roads, schools and doctors - all fine and worthy things. But he also needed to pay for them, and was spending money much faster than it was coming in. The old sultan had left him a treasure, but there wasn’t much of it remaining, and tax collection was sporadic and inefficient, especially with much of the country still on an in-kind economy. To hear Silva talk, financing the government seemed to be one desperate measure after another.
Take the foundries, for instance. Most of a neighborhood had been given over to them, and the captain had been favorably impressed at what he saw - they were small and crude by British standards, but something he’d never expected in the African interior. They could make guns; the government couldn’t pay for them. Silva had bridged the gap by parceling out foundry shares to Malê soldiers in lieu of land grants. The terms of ownership were that they would make weapons for free with iron supplied by the government, keeping a third of the iron for themselves to make items for sale. Some of the local merchants and blacksmiths had bought in as well, and so far, it seemed to be working - more than that, riverboats and caravans were starting to come to the city for “Sokoto iron.” The government had staved off bankruptcy a little longer, and the foundry owners were making money; some, even, were becoming rich.
Of course, there were others who weren’t becoming rich - those who’d been given no shares, those who sold them too soon - and that was another crisis, as the government tried to find rewards for all those who had made the march north. There wasn’t enough for everyone, and more than one officer had found himself working for one of his troops, a situation made doubly awkward by the fact that all the Malê remained as reserve soldiers. Prices were rising also, and the resentments of those left behind were fodder for the dissident mallams, who cursed the usurper who couldn’t guarantee working men a just wage. That some of those left behind had been slave-owners, and that some of those who benefited had been slaves, seemed to matter little - if anything, it made things worse.
It’ll all come down around his ears in three years, maybe less, the captain estimated. A pity, really. Maybe we’ll get some use out of him first, at least.
Showing none of this, he smiled graciously as Paulo stood up from the table, and made to follow him to the rooftop to continue the conversation. Before he could do so, he saw Silva and the Nana raise their hands. The Malê leader murmured something about coming along once the others were finished, and went up to enjoy the starlight.
“It occurs to me,” Silva said, “that we may have a common interest here.”
“A common interest?” the captain repeated. It seemed the safest thing to say.
“Your Queen wants to end the slave trade,” Nana Asma’u said bluntly. “We need arms and money. Maybe there could be an exchange…”
Sokoto
February 1842
Captain John Alexander was more impressed with Paulo Abacar than otherwise. Part of it, no doubt, was the sheer joy of hearing English spoken in the middle of a heathen wilderness - appallingly accented and rusty from disuse, but English nonetheless. And part of it was that Paulo knew his father, an infantry major who’d been seconded as a colonel in the Portuguese army during the Peninsular War and had briefly commanded the Malê leader’s regiment. Paulo had never spoken to the man, but remembered and respected the name, and treated the son like a long-lost relation.
“Is the Colonel still alive?” he asked.
“Yes, and my mother too. They’re home now - he sold up his commission eight years ago, the same time he bought mine. We have a manor in Dorset, and he makes his own blackberry brandy.”
“Can’t have that here,” Paulo said, his face betraying a smile.
“Then you’ll have to come visit,” said the captain, and to his surprise, he meant it. Because the third part of it was that, wherever he may have come from, Paulo Abacar was a man who commanded respect.
I may have come here for a reason after all, John thought. He’d been sent to Sokoto with only the vaguest mission - find out what had happened here, and what was likely to happen. Sokoto was a long way from any of Britain’s African possessions, but wars in one place could lead to wars in others, and if any British interests were at risk, the army needed to know. And on the promise side of the equation, there were rumors that the new state was as dedicated to suppressing the slave trade as the Royal Navy was. The Navy could interdict slave ships, and the commissioners in the port cities did their best to discourage their kings from doing business with the slavers, but the middleman kingdoms in the interior were out of reach. If the rumors were true, then these kingdoms might suddenly have cause to fear.
And within minutes of meeting Sokoto’s ruler, John Alexander had no doubt that that the rumors were true. When Paulo wasn’t exchanging family pleasantries, his thoughts were never far from God, and to him, God was never far from freedom.
Afterward, they’d gone from the assembly-field through the polyglot Malê quarter, to the old palace that was now the headquarters of the army and the government. Paulo entertained him to dinner that night - fufu and chicken in the Brazilian style - in the company of Amilcar Said, his chief of staff, and João Silva, the finance minister. Two others were there as well: Paulo’s wife Aisha, nursing eight-month-old Usman, and the old shehu’s daughter and informal education minister, the Nana Asma’u. Aisha, even younger than the captain, was shy and avoided his gaze; the Nana regarded him as appraisingly as any of his commanding officers ever had.
The table talk was of the army, and the recruitment of literate women for the Nana’s jaji teaching corps, and finally the reorganization of the government. Paulo wanted to expand and formalize the governing council that had grown up since the conquest: a representative for each town, two for each city, others for the army, the merchants and the Islamic schools, each constituency selecting its representatives as it saw fit. The council would meet in public, in the assembly-field where the citizens could make their views known.
“Shura,” Paulo explained. “Consultation. The ruler must consult with the ruled. Even the Prophet took counsel with the believers. How would we know we are right, unless we debate in the people’s sight and hear their voices?”
“What if the people oppose something you consider vital?”
“Then I must look to my conscience.”
That was typical of Paulo, the captain had noticed. The Malê had educated himself, found a life’s work and discovered a genius for persuading men, but in may ways he still had a sergeant’s view of the world: get himself and his men through this battle, and let the next one take care of itself. He was the despair of Silva - one of the rare slaves who’d been educated as a clerk in Brazil, and as fussy as any chartered accountant in London - and, John suspected, the true strategic minds in the room belonged to Said and the Nana.
To be sure, Paulo knew what he needed - he was a sergeant in that respect as well. He needed guns and soldiers. He needed roads, schools and doctors - all fine and worthy things. But he also needed to pay for them, and was spending money much faster than it was coming in. The old sultan had left him a treasure, but there wasn’t much of it remaining, and tax collection was sporadic and inefficient, especially with much of the country still on an in-kind economy. To hear Silva talk, financing the government seemed to be one desperate measure after another.
Take the foundries, for instance. Most of a neighborhood had been given over to them, and the captain had been favorably impressed at what he saw - they were small and crude by British standards, but something he’d never expected in the African interior. They could make guns; the government couldn’t pay for them. Silva had bridged the gap by parceling out foundry shares to Malê soldiers in lieu of land grants. The terms of ownership were that they would make weapons for free with iron supplied by the government, keeping a third of the iron for themselves to make items for sale. Some of the local merchants and blacksmiths had bought in as well, and so far, it seemed to be working - more than that, riverboats and caravans were starting to come to the city for “Sokoto iron.” The government had staved off bankruptcy a little longer, and the foundry owners were making money; some, even, were becoming rich.
Of course, there were others who weren’t becoming rich - those who’d been given no shares, those who sold them too soon - and that was another crisis, as the government tried to find rewards for all those who had made the march north. There wasn’t enough for everyone, and more than one officer had found himself working for one of his troops, a situation made doubly awkward by the fact that all the Malê remained as reserve soldiers. Prices were rising also, and the resentments of those left behind were fodder for the dissident mallams, who cursed the usurper who couldn’t guarantee working men a just wage. That some of those left behind had been slave-owners, and that some of those who benefited had been slaves, seemed to matter little - if anything, it made things worse.
It’ll all come down around his ears in three years, maybe less, the captain estimated. A pity, really. Maybe we’ll get some use out of him first, at least.
Showing none of this, he smiled graciously as Paulo stood up from the table, and made to follow him to the rooftop to continue the conversation. Before he could do so, he saw Silva and the Nana raise their hands. The Malê leader murmured something about coming along once the others were finished, and went up to enjoy the starlight.
“It occurs to me,” Silva said, “that we may have a common interest here.”
“A common interest?” the captain repeated. It seemed the safest thing to say.
“Your Queen wants to end the slave trade,” Nana Asma’u said bluntly. “We need arms and money. Maybe there could be an exchange…”
Oooh. Looks good. I suppose that this partnership with the British is what extends the Republic's life beyond the three years the British officer gave it?
It will do several things - give the Republic a few more years before the wheels come off (even a small British subsidy - which is all it will be - will go a long way in a still-mostly-preindustrial economy), allow certain cultural and social shifts more time to become self-sustaining, bring Sokoto into the British political orbit, and give the British a major soft spot for the Malê and Fulani. They'll think of the Sokoto soldiers more or less the same way they do martial-caste Indians, which will affect the type of colonialism that is ultimately practiced in the region.
Ahmadu Odubogun, Faith and Ferment: Sahel and Sudan in the Nineteenth Century (Ibadan Univ. Press, 2005)
… The British government ratified the Abacar-Alexander Agreement in June 1842, although the subsidy that Captain Alexander had envisioned was drastically cut down. By the end of the year, the first installment of British aid reached Sokoto.
Although the subsidy barely amounted to a rounding error in the British budget, it had an immediate effect on the finances of the Republic’s government. Despite the growing foundry sector, Sokoto’s economy was still essentially preindustrial and the governmental bureaucracy was not extensive. The financial situation was remained difficult, because the inherited tax system depended largely on tribute rather than direct taxation and there was no effective way to keep local headmen and councils from siphoning much of the revenue for themselves, but the Republic was at least temporarily on a paying basis.
Abacar’s government used the breathing spell to good advantage. During 1843, the integration of the Malê into the local economy was completed through use of land grants, foundry shares, business grants and subsidized marriages into merchant and craftsman families. The Republic also embarked upon the construction of military roads and an expansion of the education system.
The last of these was perhaps the most profound social process to emerge from the early Republic. In larger cities, the state sponsored the construction of primary schools and subsidized Islamic teachers, but lacked the resources to do so in smaller towns and villages. Instead, it made increasing use of the jajis, the corps of itinerant women teachers created by the Nana Asma’u to educate and Islamize village women. The jaji corps’ mission was expanded from religious to secular education, and the teachers - many of whom had previously been illiterate - were taught basic literacy and numeracy and instructed to pass on these skills to the villagers’ children.
A side effect of the jajis’ activities was the increasing adoption of the Roman alphabet. The Roman letters were easier to learn and, for women and working-class children who were not expected to become Koranic scholars, more practical. In some parts of Islamic West Africa, the Roman alphabet is still known as “women’s writing,” although by the end of the 1840s, as contact with the British empire increased, it was also widely used in business.
And business had become an increasingly central part of the Republic’s economy. The military roads and the rivers of the Niger basin facilitated commerce, and the foundries turned out cheap cast-iron pots, tools, knives and farm equipment that was in great demand throughout the region. The Sokoto economy had always been founded on local trade and subsistence production, but long-distance trade now became important; by 1845, Sokoto goods were found in Lagos and Tomboctou, and fine Yoruba woodwork and other crafts were seen in the Republic’s markets.
The mid-1840s also saw governmental and religious consolidation. The government of this time was an odd hybrid of republican and autocratic forms; a representative council existed and all citizens had the right to speak at legislative debates, but most of the councilors were unelected and it was understood that Paulo Abacar retained the final say over both council and populace. Abacar himself, emulating Usman dan Fodio, held no titles and did not fit comfortably into the emerging constitutional system, occupying the keystone position by virtue of personal right and holding powers that were largely undefined by law. The Republic was not a democracy in any sense that we would recognize today.
Nevertheless, Abacar rarely made any direct intervention in the council’s work, and a number of initiatives were withdrawn due to popular opposition expressed on the assembly-field. The town, city and sectorial representatives also acted as ambassadors from their constituency to the central government, and were often successful in securing favorable political and economic concessions. While not democratic, the Republic’s political system was one in which, at least for the time being, most people felt that they were represented and that their voices were heard.
Religiously, 1844 was the year in which Abacar completed his tract Hurriya (Freedom), which articulated human freedom, and individual and social rights, as fundamental Islamic values. By this time, Abacar was well schooled in jurisprudence and had the aid of several influential teachers in composing this tract, and so it proved a considerable work of scholarship. Hurriya also contained substantial discussion of secular history and politics, which the author related to Islamic principles; while Abacar did not explicitly claim divine authorship for constitutional documents such as the Rights of Man, he made clear his belief that their authors were inspired.
Such a work could hardly be anything other than controversial. Many imams in Sokoto and elsewhere had long denounced Abacar’s notions, and now that the theology behind these ideas had solidified, they fiercely attacked its underpinnings. Those who equated the social order with the divine order were particularly incensed at a philosophy which, they believed, encouraged slaves to rebel against masters, women against men, commoners against kings, and ultimately humans against God. The intensity with which these rival doctrines were held, added to the undercurrent of unrest in the countryside and towns.
The Republic also faced other daunting challenges. The Abacar-Alexander pact required it to use its best efforts to suppress slave raiding and transshipment by middleman kingdoms in the interior. It was largely successful in doing so along its borders, and this success, combined with Britain taking possession of Lagos as a local base and staging area for contact with the Republic, resulted in a drastic fall-off of slave shipments from the eastern coastal areas. Dahomey and the other middleman states to the west remained out of reach, though, and of more immediate importance, slave-trade suppression required a considerable commitment of the Republic’s military. When this was combined with the need to garrison the constituent cities and guard against raids and foreign invasion, the army’s resources were increasingly overstretched.
The benefits of economic growth, too, were uneven. Many local craftsmen, especially in the capital, were able to integrate into the nascent industries - some involuntarily, as the government sometimes paid for their work in foundry shares - and others, particularly in Katsina and Ilorin, pooled their resources to start their own foundries. Still others, however, were crowded out by cheaper foundry-produced goods. Also, many of those who had initially received foundry shares had sold them for immediate cash rather than viewing them as an investment, and their equity was bought up by a growing class of industrial barons. The government sought to mitigate these effects by distributing zakat through the mosques and Islamic schools, but the displaced made their grievances known more and more often on the assembly-field.
Matters came to a head in late 1844, when the finance minister initiated a proposal for direct taxation. This plan had the support of the businessmen, who saw it as an opportunity to distribute the tax burden more fairly, as well as the army and many of the Islamic schools, who would benefit from the increased revenue. The displaced class - which was too poor to pay much in taxes, and hoped that better-funded public works would provide them with jobs - was also largely in favor. But the city oligarchies - believing correctly that the plan would reduce their personal revenue and that the bureaucracy necessary to implement and collect the taxes would cut into their autonomy - were opposed, and they dominated the council.
The plan was clearly popular on the assembly-field, and citizens turned out during the debates to support it. But with most of the municipal representatives in opposition, it failed by two votes when the question was called. The dry tinder had been laid, and Abacar proceeded to ignite it by declaring that, notwithstanding the council vote, he would implement the finance minister’s program.
Within days, several provincial cities had declared rebellion, and rioting erupted on the streets of Sokoto itself, fanned by dissident clerics. Several days of pitched battles ensued between Abacar’s followers and those of the rival schools, with the latter often targeting the foundries as the source of unrest and evil. The army had to be called out to protect the military industries from destruction, and by the time the dust cleared, almost a hundred people were dead.
This also meant that much of the army had to remain in the capital when Abacar took the field to put down the rebellions. He was fortunate in that many cities, particularly those where the merchants and foundry-owners were strongest, remained loyal, and even more so in that the rebellious towns were unable to form a united front. By the time the 1845 rains put an end to the campaign season, only Kontagora and Gwandu remained in rebellion, and both would surrender on terms the following year. But the fabric of the state had been strained, and the enforced centralization that Abacar would implement in the wake of the revolt would strain it even further…
… The Republic’s neighbors were hardly at a standstill while all this was going on. The region’s rulers had kept a close eye on the Malê wars and had taken note of their weapons and tactics; by the mid-1840s, all who could do so were reforming their own military forces and tactics and combining massed musket infantry with traditional cavalry. Field artillery was also in demand, and although the Republic refused to sell any, a few of the neighboring monarchs were able to acquire field-pieces from other sources or to learn, through bribery and espionage, how they were made.
State formation and disintegration proceeded apace. In the Yoruba heartland, which was still shaken by the collapse of the Oyo Empire in 1836, every city had asserted its independence; although the remnant of the Oyo army had established themselves at Ibadan, few if any other towns acknowledged its sovereignty. There was some discussion of the need for unity in light of the British seizure of Lagos and the increasing pressure being put on the Niger Delta kingdoms, but thus far, this had come to nothing. In contrast, the turmoil in the Sokoto Caliphate had accelerated the process of reactive state formation along its borders, such as the Jukun-dominated Wukari proto-state to the south of Adamawa.
Most striking, however, was the travel of ideas, many of them originating from Sokoto, which had become the center of intellectual ferment. In some neighboring states, such as Adamawa and the three buffer cities, the influence of Sokoto was direct; Nana Asma’u’s jajis were allowed by treaty to operate there, and brought with them basic literacy and Abacar’s theology. The rulers of these countries allowed them to function, reasoning that they would benefit from having their women and children educated at someone else’s expense; they were not yet sensitized to the potential of such education to spark social change.
Elsewhere, such as the western Fulani kingdoms of Masina and Futa Jallon, ideas spread through diffusion, brought by the Niger River merchants and sometimes by exiled scholars. Here, the notions that took hold were primarily, albeit not universally, those of the Sokoto dissidents who held Abacar’s reforms to be sacrilegious and heretical. El-Hadj Umar Tall, a rising scholar and chieftain in Futa Jallon - and one who, like Abacar, had married a granddaughter of Usman dan Fodio - was a particularly strong exponent of such views. Ironically, in the name of defending Fodio’s reforms, he would adopt a radically reactionary theology that the Sokoto shehu would likely not have recognized.
Possibly the most intriguing developments, however, took place in Bornu, the Sahelian empire lying to the north and east of Adamawa. Bornu was a much older state than the Fulani kingdoms: as the inheritor of the Kanem empire, its roots dated back at least to the ninth century, and it had been Islamized since the eleventh. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was in decline, having lost ground to the Fulani jihads in the west, the richer and better-armed Ouaddai empire to the east, and restive provincial rulers in the center. During the early part of the century, Fodio’s army briefly took the capital, and his forces were only repelled through the efforts of another charismatic teacher, Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi. Although al-Kanemi didn’t overthrow the traditional king - the mai - he became the de facto ruler of the country, and also carried on a public debate with Fodio in which he argued that Muslim armies should not wage jihad against other Muslims.
By the time of al-Kanemi’s death in 1837, Bornu had regained a measure of stability, but this was quickly lost under his son Umar, a weak ruler who was opposed by the mai and by the powerful local governors. This was the country into which the last Sultan of Sokoto, the deposed Ali bin Bello, fled after the peace of 1841. He would adopt many of al-Kanemi’s positions on the limits of religious warfare and, in fact, would preach a radical withdrawal of religious teachers from politics.
Bello, disillusioned by the fate of the Sultanate and the tendency of jihads to succumb to factional fighting, retreated into the Qadiriyya Sufi disciplines of which his grandfather had been a great teacher. He embraced the Qadiriyya principle that religious thought must be free, but unlike Abacar, declined to apply this to political thought. Instead, he argued that because political thought is inherently unfree, religious study must be freed from political concerns and must focus on pure conceptions of ontology and ethics.
He did not preach true monasticism, which is forbidden in Islam, but he argued for something close to it: autonomous, self-sustaining communities of married couples who would spend most of their time in study and prayer, and to whom neighboring people could come for spiritual guidance. In the chaos that was Bornu in the 1840s, the idea of such peaceful scholarly communities proved attractive to many people.
In 1846, the last mai sought to oust Umar bin Muhammad al-Amin from power with the aid of Ouaddai. His attempt was unsuccessful, and Umar became sultan, but during the course of the war, Bello was forced to flee to Mecca. In the meantime, however, several religious communities had been founded along the lines he advocated, and in the course of his fifteen-year stay in Mecca, he would preach his doctrines there…
… The British government ratified the Abacar-Alexander Agreement in June 1842, although the subsidy that Captain Alexander had envisioned was drastically cut down. By the end of the year, the first installment of British aid reached Sokoto.
Although the subsidy barely amounted to a rounding error in the British budget, it had an immediate effect on the finances of the Republic’s government. Despite the growing foundry sector, Sokoto’s economy was still essentially preindustrial and the governmental bureaucracy was not extensive. The financial situation was remained difficult, because the inherited tax system depended largely on tribute rather than direct taxation and there was no effective way to keep local headmen and councils from siphoning much of the revenue for themselves, but the Republic was at least temporarily on a paying basis.
Abacar’s government used the breathing spell to good advantage. During 1843, the integration of the Malê into the local economy was completed through use of land grants, foundry shares, business grants and subsidized marriages into merchant and craftsman families. The Republic also embarked upon the construction of military roads and an expansion of the education system.
The last of these was perhaps the most profound social process to emerge from the early Republic. In larger cities, the state sponsored the construction of primary schools and subsidized Islamic teachers, but lacked the resources to do so in smaller towns and villages. Instead, it made increasing use of the jajis, the corps of itinerant women teachers created by the Nana Asma’u to educate and Islamize village women. The jaji corps’ mission was expanded from religious to secular education, and the teachers - many of whom had previously been illiterate - were taught basic literacy and numeracy and instructed to pass on these skills to the villagers’ children.
A side effect of the jajis’ activities was the increasing adoption of the Roman alphabet. The Roman letters were easier to learn and, for women and working-class children who were not expected to become Koranic scholars, more practical. In some parts of Islamic West Africa, the Roman alphabet is still known as “women’s writing,” although by the end of the 1840s, as contact with the British empire increased, it was also widely used in business.
And business had become an increasingly central part of the Republic’s economy. The military roads and the rivers of the Niger basin facilitated commerce, and the foundries turned out cheap cast-iron pots, tools, knives and farm equipment that was in great demand throughout the region. The Sokoto economy had always been founded on local trade and subsistence production, but long-distance trade now became important; by 1845, Sokoto goods were found in Lagos and Tomboctou, and fine Yoruba woodwork and other crafts were seen in the Republic’s markets.
The mid-1840s also saw governmental and religious consolidation. The government of this time was an odd hybrid of republican and autocratic forms; a representative council existed and all citizens had the right to speak at legislative debates, but most of the councilors were unelected and it was understood that Paulo Abacar retained the final say over both council and populace. Abacar himself, emulating Usman dan Fodio, held no titles and did not fit comfortably into the emerging constitutional system, occupying the keystone position by virtue of personal right and holding powers that were largely undefined by law. The Republic was not a democracy in any sense that we would recognize today.
Nevertheless, Abacar rarely made any direct intervention in the council’s work, and a number of initiatives were withdrawn due to popular opposition expressed on the assembly-field. The town, city and sectorial representatives also acted as ambassadors from their constituency to the central government, and were often successful in securing favorable political and economic concessions. While not democratic, the Republic’s political system was one in which, at least for the time being, most people felt that they were represented and that their voices were heard.
Religiously, 1844 was the year in which Abacar completed his tract Hurriya (Freedom), which articulated human freedom, and individual and social rights, as fundamental Islamic values. By this time, Abacar was well schooled in jurisprudence and had the aid of several influential teachers in composing this tract, and so it proved a considerable work of scholarship. Hurriya also contained substantial discussion of secular history and politics, which the author related to Islamic principles; while Abacar did not explicitly claim divine authorship for constitutional documents such as the Rights of Man, he made clear his belief that their authors were inspired.
Such a work could hardly be anything other than controversial. Many imams in Sokoto and elsewhere had long denounced Abacar’s notions, and now that the theology behind these ideas had solidified, they fiercely attacked its underpinnings. Those who equated the social order with the divine order were particularly incensed at a philosophy which, they believed, encouraged slaves to rebel against masters, women against men, commoners against kings, and ultimately humans against God. The intensity with which these rival doctrines were held, added to the undercurrent of unrest in the countryside and towns.
The Republic also faced other daunting challenges. The Abacar-Alexander pact required it to use its best efforts to suppress slave raiding and transshipment by middleman kingdoms in the interior. It was largely successful in doing so along its borders, and this success, combined with Britain taking possession of Lagos as a local base and staging area for contact with the Republic, resulted in a drastic fall-off of slave shipments from the eastern coastal areas. Dahomey and the other middleman states to the west remained out of reach, though, and of more immediate importance, slave-trade suppression required a considerable commitment of the Republic’s military. When this was combined with the need to garrison the constituent cities and guard against raids and foreign invasion, the army’s resources were increasingly overstretched.
The benefits of economic growth, too, were uneven. Many local craftsmen, especially in the capital, were able to integrate into the nascent industries - some involuntarily, as the government sometimes paid for their work in foundry shares - and others, particularly in Katsina and Ilorin, pooled their resources to start their own foundries. Still others, however, were crowded out by cheaper foundry-produced goods. Also, many of those who had initially received foundry shares had sold them for immediate cash rather than viewing them as an investment, and their equity was bought up by a growing class of industrial barons. The government sought to mitigate these effects by distributing zakat through the mosques and Islamic schools, but the displaced made their grievances known more and more often on the assembly-field.
Matters came to a head in late 1844, when the finance minister initiated a proposal for direct taxation. This plan had the support of the businessmen, who saw it as an opportunity to distribute the tax burden more fairly, as well as the army and many of the Islamic schools, who would benefit from the increased revenue. The displaced class - which was too poor to pay much in taxes, and hoped that better-funded public works would provide them with jobs - was also largely in favor. But the city oligarchies - believing correctly that the plan would reduce their personal revenue and that the bureaucracy necessary to implement and collect the taxes would cut into their autonomy - were opposed, and they dominated the council.
The plan was clearly popular on the assembly-field, and citizens turned out during the debates to support it. But with most of the municipal representatives in opposition, it failed by two votes when the question was called. The dry tinder had been laid, and Abacar proceeded to ignite it by declaring that, notwithstanding the council vote, he would implement the finance minister’s program.
Within days, several provincial cities had declared rebellion, and rioting erupted on the streets of Sokoto itself, fanned by dissident clerics. Several days of pitched battles ensued between Abacar’s followers and those of the rival schools, with the latter often targeting the foundries as the source of unrest and evil. The army had to be called out to protect the military industries from destruction, and by the time the dust cleared, almost a hundred people were dead.
This also meant that much of the army had to remain in the capital when Abacar took the field to put down the rebellions. He was fortunate in that many cities, particularly those where the merchants and foundry-owners were strongest, remained loyal, and even more so in that the rebellious towns were unable to form a united front. By the time the 1845 rains put an end to the campaign season, only Kontagora and Gwandu remained in rebellion, and both would surrender on terms the following year. But the fabric of the state had been strained, and the enforced centralization that Abacar would implement in the wake of the revolt would strain it even further…
… The Republic’s neighbors were hardly at a standstill while all this was going on. The region’s rulers had kept a close eye on the Malê wars and had taken note of their weapons and tactics; by the mid-1840s, all who could do so were reforming their own military forces and tactics and combining massed musket infantry with traditional cavalry. Field artillery was also in demand, and although the Republic refused to sell any, a few of the neighboring monarchs were able to acquire field-pieces from other sources or to learn, through bribery and espionage, how they were made.
State formation and disintegration proceeded apace. In the Yoruba heartland, which was still shaken by the collapse of the Oyo Empire in 1836, every city had asserted its independence; although the remnant of the Oyo army had established themselves at Ibadan, few if any other towns acknowledged its sovereignty. There was some discussion of the need for unity in light of the British seizure of Lagos and the increasing pressure being put on the Niger Delta kingdoms, but thus far, this had come to nothing. In contrast, the turmoil in the Sokoto Caliphate had accelerated the process of reactive state formation along its borders, such as the Jukun-dominated Wukari proto-state to the south of Adamawa.
Most striking, however, was the travel of ideas, many of them originating from Sokoto, which had become the center of intellectual ferment. In some neighboring states, such as Adamawa and the three buffer cities, the influence of Sokoto was direct; Nana Asma’u’s jajis were allowed by treaty to operate there, and brought with them basic literacy and Abacar’s theology. The rulers of these countries allowed them to function, reasoning that they would benefit from having their women and children educated at someone else’s expense; they were not yet sensitized to the potential of such education to spark social change.
Elsewhere, such as the western Fulani kingdoms of Masina and Futa Jallon, ideas spread through diffusion, brought by the Niger River merchants and sometimes by exiled scholars. Here, the notions that took hold were primarily, albeit not universally, those of the Sokoto dissidents who held Abacar’s reforms to be sacrilegious and heretical. El-Hadj Umar Tall, a rising scholar and chieftain in Futa Jallon - and one who, like Abacar, had married a granddaughter of Usman dan Fodio - was a particularly strong exponent of such views. Ironically, in the name of defending Fodio’s reforms, he would adopt a radically reactionary theology that the Sokoto shehu would likely not have recognized.
Possibly the most intriguing developments, however, took place in Bornu, the Sahelian empire lying to the north and east of Adamawa. Bornu was a much older state than the Fulani kingdoms: as the inheritor of the Kanem empire, its roots dated back at least to the ninth century, and it had been Islamized since the eleventh. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was in decline, having lost ground to the Fulani jihads in the west, the richer and better-armed Ouaddai empire to the east, and restive provincial rulers in the center. During the early part of the century, Fodio’s army briefly took the capital, and his forces were only repelled through the efforts of another charismatic teacher, Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi. Although al-Kanemi didn’t overthrow the traditional king - the mai - he became the de facto ruler of the country, and also carried on a public debate with Fodio in which he argued that Muslim armies should not wage jihad against other Muslims.
By the time of al-Kanemi’s death in 1837, Bornu had regained a measure of stability, but this was quickly lost under his son Umar, a weak ruler who was opposed by the mai and by the powerful local governors. This was the country into which the last Sultan of Sokoto, the deposed Ali bin Bello, fled after the peace of 1841. He would adopt many of al-Kanemi’s positions on the limits of religious warfare and, in fact, would preach a radical withdrawal of religious teachers from politics.
Bello, disillusioned by the fate of the Sultanate and the tendency of jihads to succumb to factional fighting, retreated into the Qadiriyya Sufi disciplines of which his grandfather had been a great teacher. He embraced the Qadiriyya principle that religious thought must be free, but unlike Abacar, declined to apply this to political thought. Instead, he argued that because political thought is inherently unfree, religious study must be freed from political concerns and must focus on pure conceptions of ontology and ethics.
He did not preach true monasticism, which is forbidden in Islam, but he argued for something close to it: autonomous, self-sustaining communities of married couples who would spend most of their time in study and prayer, and to whom neighboring people could come for spiritual guidance. In the chaos that was Bornu in the 1840s, the idea of such peaceful scholarly communities proved attractive to many people.
In 1846, the last mai sought to oust Umar bin Muhammad al-Amin from power with the aid of Ouaddai. His attempt was unsuccessful, and Umar became sultan, but during the course of the war, Bello was forced to flee to Mecca. In the meantime, however, several religious communities had been founded along the lines he advocated, and in the course of his fifteen-year stay in Mecca, he would preach his doctrines there…
Last edited:
Interesting...this will have a large effect on Islam as a whole, if these monastic communities catch on beyond West Africa. The butterflies, they flap...
I'm interested in how its after effects will filter to Ottoman Empire, and then the rest of the muslim world. IOTL Ottoman Empire was undoubtedly the champion of Islamic modernism and the main channel/filter of western ideas to be translated to Islamic language through, and would still be ITTL. While this revolution will emit significant influence outwards, I don't see West African model of translating western ideas to Islamic context will spread outside of western Africa, or at least of Sahel(which raises a question, what this will do to the places such as Sudan ?), so other parts of Islamic world will remain depended on Ottoman Empire in this regard. Ottomans however, would be effected, especially with some of spill overs of the revolution arriving in the empire's territory, such as Bello. It won't do anything to the rate of liberalization of the empire. Ottomans were already Europeans themselves, and Tanzimat is already rolling by this point. Intellectual exchanges between the two regions will be interesting, however. And Bello's teachings of separation between religious and political thoughts will add an interesting spice to Islamic secularism.
To bad that you will most likely go for eventual Ottoman defeat against Russians in 1878, as per OTL. An Ottoman victory of that war would've had enabled Ottoman intervention in Egypt which will result to the absorption of a large chunk of Africa. That however, will make the colonization of West Africa by European powers totally impossible altogether within the context of this TL.
To bad that you will most likely go for eventual Ottoman defeat against Russians in 1878, as per OTL. An Ottoman victory of that war would've had enabled Ottoman intervention in Egypt which will result to the absorption of a large chunk of Africa. That however, will make the colonization of West Africa by European powers totally impossible altogether within the context of this TL.
wolf_brother
Banned
1878 is a long ways off from the 1840s, and with 'revolutionary' 'republican' ideas filtering into the Arab and Islamic worlds so early on we can't reasonably say at all what will happen in 30+ years. Especially considering the Turkish Empire's reactions to the 1848 Revolutions, especially in Serbia & Romania, or the 1850 Romanian Uprising, could be completely different ITTL.
Well, you're well known around here as an Ottoman expert and I daresay you've hashed this out many times, but why it would work out so neatly and inevitably as all that? Wouldn't the British still prefer their own influence over Egypt to Ottoman hegemony? Even if the Sultanate could get effective control over Egypt, would it automatically follow that the whole belt of the Sahel all the way to the Atlantic would also come under Ottoman authority, and that that authority would prevail all the way down the coast of West Africa, even among people who weren't fully Islamicized yet? To the point where no European power could possibly dislodge them? And the Sultanate would have both the reach and the will to make sure all this happens?
Such a stronger Ottoman power in the far corner of Africa, if it does indeed spread at least along the inland Sahel/Sahara border area where the population had long been Muslim, would at least give local West African powers an alternative to European colonialism--Ottoman colonialism.
In a bidding war for their loyalties, West Africans could presumably negotiate quite a lot of improved status for themselves, perhaps to the point where some could even play both sides off against each other and maintain independence.But while I wouldn't argue a stronger and more advanced Ottoman state is an unreasonable development, it seems to me it must be contingent on a lot of other things than winning that war with Russia. Perhaps you mean to say that victory would be a necessary though not sufficient condition for the outcome you envision?
I trust Jonathan Edelstein to include whatever butterflies seem reasonable or necessary. It isn't clear to me that the POD which is becoming effective in the West of Africa would warrant an automatic strengthening of Ottoman power, but it seems plausible that state might benefit from it somehow, thus win against Russia in '78 or so, and the possibility you speak of would be open.
But since it is already foreshadowed, at least hinted, West Africa will indeed still be partitioned among European powers, presumably it doesn't go that far here. However he's said nothing about what's going on near the east end of the Med; it could well be that while the Sultan doesn't in fact pick up the whole sweep of northern Africa and has no strong presence in West Africa, the Ottomans are going along just fine in general in their own region, including perhaps a fully integrated Egypt.
I just don't see how Ottoman Egypt automatically and necessarily implies Ottoman West Africa, only that it might make it possible.
Well, you're well known around here as an Ottoman expert and I daresay you've hashed this out many times, but why it would work out so neatly and inevitably as all that? Wouldn't the British still prefer their own influence over Egypt to Ottoman hegemony? Even if the Sultanate could get effective control over Egypt, would it automatically follow that the whole belt of the Sahel all the way to the Atlantic would also come under Ottoman authority, and that that authority would prevail all the way down the coast of West Africa, even among people who weren't fully Islamicized yet? To the point where no European power could possibly dislodge them? And the Sultanate would have both the reach and the will to make sure all this happens?
Such a stronger Ottoman power in the far corner of Africa, if it does indeed spread at least along the inland Sahel/Sahara border area where the population had long been Muslim, would at least give local West African powers an alternative to European colonialism--Ottoman colonialism.
But while I wouldn't argue a stronger and more advanced Ottoman state is an unreasonable development, it seems to me it must be contingent on a lot of other things than winning that war with Russia. Perhaps you mean to say that victory would be a necessary though not sufficient condition for the outcome you envision?
I trust Jonathan Edelstein to include whatever butterflies seem reasonable or necessary. It isn't clear to me that the POD which is becoming effective in the West of Africa would warrant an automatic strengthening of Ottoman power, but it seems plausible that state might benefit from it somehow, thus win against Russia in '78 or so, and the possibility you speak of would be open.
But since it is already foreshadowed, at least hinted, West Africa will indeed still be partitioned among European powers, presumably it doesn't go that far here. However he's said nothing about what's going on near the east end of the Med; it could well be that while the Sultan doesn't in fact pick up the whole sweep of northern Africa and has no strong presence in West Africa, the Ottomans are going along just fine in general in their own region, including perhaps a fully integrated Egypt.
I just don't see how Ottoman Egypt automatically and necessarily implies Ottoman West Africa, only that it might make it possible.
I'm not an Ottoman expert, just an enthusiast whose knowledge of his most favorite subject is mostly second hand from actual experts.
I'm just pointing out that, with the hint of future British colonialism over Male heartland and surroundings, should mean that Egypt would still go British. Otherwise, with even more organized and ideologically inspired natives, west Africa will be nigh impossible to colonize when there is a non-negligible factor of Ottoman involvement to consider.
No. I didn't say there will be an Ottoman colonialism over West Africa in such case. That would simply be stretching it even with Ottoman Egypt since the population thickens as you go west of Chad Basin. Hausa-land would be simply to populous for direct rule, being so far a country from the nearest reliable Ottoman power base. Political patronage however, is ensured, especially in the face of encroaching expansion of European imperialism, which will only cement the west African muslims into Ottoman orbit. Any French-intended designs for Sahel will be toast in such situation and British presence in the region even more limited, restricted to places remote away from any Islamic influence, or at least formidable enough in the face of it. OTOH more intellectual sophistication means more sophisticated independent identity, but that can only be potentially poisonous to Ottoman credibility when the question of European threat loses its relevance. Even with that said, we can rely on Ottomans to refrain from wasting their energy in far away places. Should even that won't be the case, Europeans remain the biggest losers either way. All that of course, applies only if the Ottomans are to regain Egypt. Jonathan Edelstein has settled for British rule over Male. At least allow me to hope for the Osmanli Caliphate to survive ITTL, even though ITTL it will be less a requirement in proliferating liberalism and intellectual progress within Islamic World, but it can sure help even further smoothing the process.
Last edited:
The Sandman
Banned
Isn't the Ottoman defeat in the 1877-78 war easy to butterfly away by having the assassination of the defense minister just prior to the war either not occur or fail? IIRC it was his replacement with an incompetent old man that ruined the Ottoman ability to use their advantages vis a vis Russia properly.