Tunde Leye: A tale of two Caliphates (Y! FrontPage)

by Tunde Leye

tunde-leye1

 

It must be seen that apart from the issues of governance, poverty and politics in the region, there is an underlying clash of two caliphates – the older, less dominant but dogged Bornu Caliphate of the Kanuri and the newer, Sokoto Caliphate of the Fulani. 

The immediate causes and history of Boko Haram is now known as more and more people come out to speak on the matter. In today’s piece, I intend to show how far back we might need to look to get a proper context of things. It is of course by no means the only perspective we need to look at, but I again intend to demonstrate something which I hope will be clear at the end. There is the political context as well as the general rise of terrorism in the world and the various wars and insurgencies in the Sahel region of West Africa to draw context from. There is a military context. This is a however a historical context of the matter. In crafting the long lasting solution to Boko Haram and such insurgencies, especially in the north, it will be important to factor all these perspectives into the thoughts that go into these solutions.

All over the world, to understand the current state of the relationship between peoples, one of the key things is done is to study the historic trend of the relationship these people have with each other. Hence, it is easy to understand the dichotomy in Canada by understanding the history with the French and English parts. It is easy to understand the kind of arrangement in the United Kingdom with its various component parts (which can be confusing for non Europeans) and why Northern Ireland is not part of that arrangement. You would understand why being a protestant would make things rather difficult for you in the very catholic Northern Ireland. It is easy to understand the kind of rivalry and enmity in some Arab states when one looks into history to see how Shi’a and Sunni Muslims have been at each others’ throats. Now, history does not necessarily precondition a people to act a certain way. Choices can be made to act differently. But before those choices can be made, we must understand history and then make that informed choice. This is why I am sad when I see Nigerians that know more about foreign history than those of the people that make up this country. It seems there is a concerted effort by our leaders to shroud our history from us. Many times, it leaves us groping in the dark to understand things.

With these thoughts in mind, come with me into history, to understand context and why the North East in particular and the North generally prone to violent Islamic uprisings. The epicenter of the Boko Haram insurgency, Borno State, gets its name from an ancient empire, the Kanem-Bornu Empire. The Empire was ruled for almost a thousand years by the Sayfawa Dynasty, making it the longest lasting continuous dynasty in history. The original Kanem Empire went into decline due to internal struggles and external incursions from the Bulala, only to reemerge without a break in the Sayfawa dynasty as a mix of the Kanembu and Bornu people (Kanuri). Their intermarriage is what we know today as the Kanuri. Their empire spanned across the borders of four modern countries (Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroun). The Kanem-Bornu Empire was very prosperous and was one of the world acclaimed caliphates for much of its history, run on the Constitution of Medina which was drawn up by The Prophet himself. It had relationships (both religious and trade) with most of the Arab world, Europeans and its northern and southern African neighbors. In fact, it was such an important Islamic Caliphate that during Mai Idris Alooma’s reign (1564 – 1596), the Ottoman Empire, at the zenith of its own power sent a 200-man ambassadorial delegation to Alooma’s court. You read right, they sent two hundred people. Evidently, the Kanuri had a great reputation as both an empire that was valuable to trade and as an Islamic center, enough to garner such an interest from the leading Islamic power of the world at that time. In the region, they were the supreme Islamic authority.

This was the situation of things for almost a thousand years, until around 1804, a Fulani scholar, Usman Dan Fodio, in the region to the west of the Kanuri in what is now Northern Nigeria arose, and proclaimed a jihad. Note that this jihad was fought against people who claimed to be Muslims. It was not an issue of jihad against non-Muslims, but one against people who did not practice Islam the way Dan Fodio interpreted it. This was not an isolated jihad. Two hundred years before Dan Fodio’s Jihad, based on the teachings of Fulani scholars known as the Torodbe who originated from Futa Toro in the Senegalese highlands, Fulani had fought such jihads. Starting from the easternmost fringes of the West African Sahel, they moved westwards steadily, creating Emirates with various degrees of success. In Futa Toro where they originated, their jihad failed. They had better success with Futa Jallon and then further westwards with Massina. By the time Dan Fodio’s jihad began in 1808, they had perfected the process and the Sokoto Caliphate was their most outstanding success. The Dan Fodio jihad swept eastwards up to the fringes of the Bornu Empire. At this time, the Kanembu were in decline and weakened, and in spite of valiant fighting, the Fulani were able to drive them from Ngarzargamu, their capital. However, unlike most other people the Fulani overcame, the Bornu did not capitulate. The Fulani were unable to establish a Fulani Emirate there and the Bornu Caliphate continued, no longer under the Sayfawa, but under a new leader Muhammad Al-Kanemi, who was a scholar and former adviser of the Mai (in many ways similar to the role Dan Fodio played in Gobir before he began the jihad). Al-Kanemi built a new capital for the Kanuri in Kukawa and was able to lead an alliance of Shuwa Arabs, Kanembu and other people in the area to successfully repel the Fulani. Hence, the Kanuri retained their caliphate, and the Fulani started theirs. Al-Kanemi not only confronted the Dan Fodio militarily, but also confronted him on a political, theological and scholarly level in a series of letters exchanged by the two men, arguing the Islamic faith and why Dan Fodio was declaring a jihad against a state which had been Muslim for over 800years. Al-Kanemi’s successors supplanted the Mais and ended the Sayfawa dynasty. The current Shehu of Bornu is a descendant of Al-Kanemi.

It was around this time that the British arrived and what they met on ground was a strong and large Fulani Sultanate as against a weakened and largely reduced Bornu Caliphate. Without a sense of the history, they might have assumed that the Fulani Sultanate was the senior of the two. However, the Kanuri saw their much older Caliphate as the senior and the Fulani as upstart claimants to caliphate status. There was not little animosity between the Kanuri Muslims, and the Fulani Muslims. When the boundaries were being drawn during the Berlin Conference around this time in 1884, as with many areas of Africa, the borders were drawn arbitrarily, and the result was that within the space that was called Nigeria after 1914, the once dominant Kanuri became a minority, while the newer Fulani/Hausa became the majority. This, coupled with the fact that the British that subjugated also proselytized within the Kanuri sphere but chose not to within the Fulani sphere led the Kanuri people to view the British and all they represented with three resentments. The first was one against all foreigners, and all those who became Christians. The second, was against the neighboring Fulani caliphate which they saw as usurpers. The third was against the balkanization of their empire into what these foreigners now called “countries” with different parts going to different countries (Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria). Why should a Kanuri man who had ridden all over the empire be unable now to cross Lake Chad because some foreigner in Kanuri land told him he was no longer allowed there because it was a new country? All of this resentment was channeled into groups that were anti-western, anti non-Kanuri people and anti-Christian. Hence one sees that the core of Boko Haram has always been Kanuri and its areas of strength and operations are in Kanuri dominated areas. One understands the ease of the members crossing the borders in this light – to the “Nigerians and the “Chadians, Nigeriens and Cameroonians”, there is really no border. They are simply moving in traditional Kanuri space. One understands the reason for the rise of Ansaru and why the first item on their agenda, according to Wikipedia is this

“to describe Boko Haram’s actions as inhuman to the Muslim Ummah and to praise the Sokoto Caliphate’s Founder, Usman Dan Fodio”

When one takes this with what the Wikipedia page on Boko Haram states “the group is also known to assign non-Kanuris on suicide missions”, it becomes increasingly clear against the historical background that we are missing a critical angle of the assessment of the Boko Haram crises and why North Eastern Nigeria is so prone to these insurgencies and why many of the surviving members of Maitatsine fled to Bulumkutu (near Maiduguri), Gombe and Yola, all in the North East, which later became the sites of other riots. It also explains why Musa Makaniki, the Maitatsine disciple responsible for the 1985 Gombe riots took refuge in Cameroon. We must see why the Sultan is unable to speak out strongly against Boko Haram. Also, it will shed light on the rise of Dongonawa’s Fulani fighters who are still being ignored by the government.

It must be seen that apart from the issues of governance, poverty and politics in the region, there is an underlying clash of two caliphates – the older, less dominant but dogged Bornu Caliphate of the Kanuri and the newer, Sokoto Caliphate of the Fulani. It is a tale of a former proud world renowned power and Islamic center, reduced to a minority in a country, fighting against those who are now the majority and who claim to be the new Islamic center in that region.

There has been an error in our foundation as a nation where the narrative was not designed as Nkrumah designed for Ghana, a narrative where the tribe is present, but the new national identity is strong and people have reconciled the complexity of being both a Ghanaian and a Fanti or an Asanti man or woman. Any solution we create for Boko Haram and other regional insurgencies must include a clear attempt to create what we did not at the beginning – a clear sense of what it means to be Nigerian, without this conflicting with being Igbo, Yoruba, Bini, Eggon, Anang, Ibibio, Nupe, Igala, Birom, Idoma, Tiv, Kanuri, Hausa, Fulani, Bolewa, Igala and so on at the same time. After the immediate solution of defeating Boko Haram militarily and containing the security situation, this is the harder, longer term work the intellectuals and leadership must do.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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