Sokoto Caliphate

The Sokoto Caliphate was a West African Islamic state founded in 1804 by Usman dan Fodio, a Fulani scholar and religious reformer who led a jihad against the Hausa city-states of what is now northern Nigeria in the name of reforming Islamic practice in the region. At its height in the mid-nineteenth century the caliphate was one of the largest states in Africa, a loose federation of emirates owing allegiance to the Sultan of Sokoto and covering territory across present-day northern Nigeria, Niger and parts of Cameroon, organized around Islamic law, trade, scholarship and agriculture. Usman dan Fodio's son Muhammed Bello, who founded the city of Sokoto as its capital, and Bello's uncle Abdullahi dan Fodio helped consolidate the new state's administration after the founder's death in 1817. The caliphate's political independence ended in 1903 when British colonial forces under Frederick Lugard defeated the sultan's army and incorporated its territory into the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, though the sultanate itself survives today as a traditional and religious institution within Nigeria.