Intellectual Traditions, Scholarly Networks, and Jihad in West Africa: The Sokoto Caliphate and State Formation in West Africa

Lately, with the rise in northern Nigeria and surrounding border regions of “the community of the people of the Sunna who fight for the cause by means of jihad according to the method of the Salaf”—known more colloquially as “Boko Haram”—many surface comparisons have been made between this group and the Sokoto jihad of the early nineteenth century in terms of militant jihadist ideology and territoriality.  However, what is often left out of the discussion is the fact that the Sokoto jihad and Boko Haram draw from very different intellectual traditions within Islam. Indeed, Boko Haram is not only in opposition to Islamic Modernism but also to the “Sokoto intellectual tradition”. In light of recent events, a re-examination of the intellectual foundations of the Sokoto jihad, and the continuation of the “Sokoto intellectual tradition” in the region is timely. In this paper, I will examine the intellectual foundations of the Sokoto jihad, the scholarly networks of Sokoto leaders and the impact they had on subsequent religious and political formations in West Africa as well as opposition to Sokoto intellectual thought.