Title: Two Icons of Islamic West Africa: Usman Dan Fodio and Umar Tal
Author: Zafarul-Islam Khan
Publisher: The Institute of Islamic and Arab Studies, New Delhi
Reviewed by Syed Nooruzzaman
These days, countries in the African continent are in the news mostly for wrong reasons. Darfur, a part of Sudan, faces the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis because of the unending civil war and the famine that may lead to thousands of people dying of starvation if no effective preventive measures are taken soon.
But there was a time when Africa, mainly its northern and western parts, attracted the world’s attention owing to its Islamist scholar-leaders establishing empires. Two such geniuses, Usman Dan Fodio (died in April 1817) and Shaikh Umar Tal (1797-1864), founded Islamic empires using the idea of hijrah (migration) in the 18th century in an interesting manner.
Usman’s empire called the Sokoto caliphate comprised areas in today’s North Nigeria and the surrounding towns and villages, and Shaikh Umar was behind the Sokoto Empire that existed in Mali and its vicinity.
How they persuaded or influenced people to migrate (to undertake hijrah) to areas where they could fearlessly observe their religious practices has been discussed in Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan’s latest book, “Two Icons of Islamic West Africa”.
Dr Khan points out that the two leaders used the idea of hijrah as a strategy to consolidate their positions in the areas where they established their powerful caliphates. The author says, “The idea of hijrah has been employed in a number of places as a standard line of defence against Western colonial advances ; for example, hijrah of Muslims from Andalus after its fall in Christian hands in 1492 CE, movements led by Algeria’s Amir Abd al-Qadir (d. 1883), Mauritania’s Ma’ al-Ainayn (d. 1910), Somalia’s Abdullah Hasan (d. 1920), India’s hijrah movement of 1920 and the migration of Muslims from areas taken over by the Russians in the Caucasus during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
Dr Khan informs us that Shehu was probably the first Muslim scholar to come out with a treatise on the idea of hijrah. Two more such volumes were produced but only after a gap of half a century.
Sheikh Umar defended the hijrah idea forcefully when he was faced with the view, quoting what the Prophet of Islam said when Makkah was conquered. The Prophet’s saying has it that “there is no hijrah after the conquest of Makkah.” Sheikh Umar’s explanation was that the hadith basically declares that there will be no further migration from Makkah after it ceased to be an abode of kufr. He, however, quotes anonymous sources in support of his idea.
