_THE FULAH REVOLUTION._
Simultaneously with the commencement of Park’s work of exploration,
an event of almost equal moment in the history of the Niger basin had
begun to germinate. This was the phenomenal rise to a position of
immense political and religious importance of the Fulahs--a people
known among the Haussa as Fillani, and in Bornu as Fillatah.
As Park was the forerunner of Christian enterprise, so Othman dan
Fodiyo, a simple Fulah Malaam or teacher, in raising the banner of
Islam, marked the revival of the political and religious spirit of
Mohammedanism in the Central and Western Sudan.
We have seen how the huge empire of Songhay crumbled into pieces before
the musketeers of a Moorish sultan--how with its political influence
went its civilising influence, and whole kingdoms and provinces fell
back into the old idolatry and barbarism.
Similarly and almost contemporaneously, Bornu, largely though not so
entirely, lost its old military power and progressive force. The Haussa
States, left to themselves, showed a like degenerative tendency, and
largely lapsed into the old heathen ways.
But in all the mass of idolatry was a leaven of quickening influence,
which prevented it from becoming altogether dead and sodden. From Lake
Chad to the Atlantic there was scattered one remarkable race who forgot
not God, neither lapsed into the abominations of the infidel. Though
without political status, and holding no better position than that
of semi-serfs--being, moreover, spread broadcast in small groups as
shepherds--they yet had in them a bond of union and an inspiring force
which supported them in all their trials, and kept them from racial
annihilation.
[Illustration: GROUP OF FULAHS.]
That race was the Fulah, and their bond of union was the religion of
Islam.
Where they came from is unknown. Everything relating to them is a
matter of conjecture, though in the Sudanese chronicles we find
various allusions to them extending back several centuries.
Their well-chiselled features, straight wiry hair, and copper-coloured
skin, all distinctly mark them off as not African, and point towards
the East as the cradle of their race. Still more, their well-developed
skulls and high intellectual average place them on an altogether higher
level in the scale of humanity than any of the negro or Bantu races
among whom they settled.
At some remote period, we may safely conjecture, they immigrated from
the East, and gradually moved westward--not as warrior-conquerors, but
as peace-loving shepherds, whose knowledge of cattle, &c., made them
welcome additions to every country they reached. Nomadic in habit, and
depending for subsistence on their flocks and herds, it was impossible
for them to settle in large numbers in any one place--the country being
already occupied by the negro inhabitants. Accordingly it was ever
necessary for them to move westward, leaving behind them only such
numbers as could conveniently get a living.
By the fourteenth or fifteenth century the Fulahs had reached the
watersheds of the Niger and the Gambia. Here the migratory tide was
stopped by physical and other causes. The country beyond proved to be
less adapted for pastoral pursuits, and possibly was already thickly
populated.
There being no further outlet westward, the newcomers naturally
accumulated as does the dammed back stream. They increased in numbers,
and correspondingly in power, till they became of no small importance,
and founded for themselves a kingdom which has been already mentioned
under the name of Fulahdu.
When Islam crossed the desert and found its way in the ninth and
tenth centuries into the Sudan, the Fulahs were the very first to
become converts to the new religion. Their temperament, their higher
intellectual development, made them more quickly susceptible to the
new influences, and hence it was that while as yet the great mass of
the aborigines were still infidel, the Fulahs with one voice were
proclaiming their belief in Allah and His Prophet. Persecution, as in
the case of other religions, had only the result of burning the tenets
of Islam deeper into their souls, causing their faith to shine with a
clearer and more spiritual light to the edification and instruction of
the surrounding idolaters. In the Western Sudan, where they enjoyed, or
came to enjoy, an independent existence, Islam spread among the Fulahs
with special rapidity; and with the fall of Songhay and the crippling
of the influence of Timbuktu, they became the chief propagators of
Mohammedanism and the great encouragers of learning by means of mosques
and schools--rarely by the power of fire and the sword. Not only did
they and their co-religionists of neighbouring tribes, the Mandingoes
and the Jolofs, thus spread a knowledge of the One God--they at the
same time did an equally noble work in arraying themselves against the
rapidly advancing flood of gin which Christian Europe was pouring into
their country. With that traffic they would have nothing to do, and
unlike so many of our Christian merchants, no consideration of profit
would tempt them to a compromise between their conscience and the lust
for gain.
Meanwhile the Fulahs of the kingdoms of the interior had much to do
to hold their own among their Pagan masters. Their position was most
galling to a race which knew themselves infinitely superior to those
whom they were obliged to own as masters--more bitter still that they,
the inheritors of the promises, should be ruled by idolaters and men
whose portion was Gehenna. Broken up as they were into little groups
scattered over an enormous area, what could they do? The answer to
that question was speedily forthcoming. They had, as we have shown,
the necessary bond of union and the inspiring spiritual force to make
them fight as one man for a common end. They only needed the leader
to utilise this force and bring it into action. Such a man is never
wanting when the times demand him, and he in this case was forthcoming
in the person of Othman, the Imam or religious sheik of the Fulah of
Gober, the northern of the Haussa States.
Under the influence of this sheik the Fulah of that region were roused
to a state of religious fervour such as they had never known before.
His fiery eloquence touched their excitable and imaginative nature as
he brought home to them the shame of their semi-enslaved position.
The fires of discontent were thus set smouldering, and required but a
little more fanning to cause them to blaze into the flames of rebellion.
Meanwhile their Haussa ruler, Bawa, was not blind to the dangerous
ferment existing among them, and fearing the results, summoned Othman
to his presence, and severely reprimanded him. This was sufficient for
the proud and enthusiastic “Believer.” He left Bawa’s presence only to
raise the standard of revolt--the sacred banner of Islam. The effect
was electric. In response to his summons the Fulah at once gathered
around him in an enthusiastic army.
But they were mostly shepherds--men of peace, unaccustomed to the use
of arms; and they could not be at once transformed into successful
warriors. Consequently at first they met with discomfiture and defeat
in every encounter. Had they been fighting for themselves the movement
would undoubtedly have collapsed at the first rude shock of arms. But
happily for them they had a higher interest at heart. They fought for
God and His Prophet, whose instruments they believed themselves to be.
In such a warfare there could be no doubt in their minds as to whose
would ultimately be the victory. With ever-growing zeal they returned
to the charge, stimulated in their glorious crusade by their leader
Othman’s religious songs and fiery words, which told them that theirs
was a cause for which it was much to live and fight, but even more to
die, if it should be God’s will.
Thus led and encouraged, the Fulah grew in experience of battle and
the use of arms. The hordes of shepherds were gradually beaten into a
disciplined army of warriors, and from defeat rose to victory.
Thus it was that Othman and his ever-victorious army burst forth
from Gober on their irresistible career, filling the wild wastes of
Central African heathendom with their cry of “None but the One God,”
till the whole of the Western and Central Sudan, from Lake Chad to the
Atlantic, acknowledged more or less temporarily the political supremacy
of the Fulah. Yet it was no mere temporal power that Othman and his
people sought to establish--theirs was a conquest for God. They acted
but as His agents. Before them fetishism and all its degrading rites
disappeared. No longer did the natives bow down to stocks and stones,
but to Allah, the One God. Once more, as in the palmy days of Songhay
and Bornu, schools and mosques sprang up throughout the land, and the
Greatness, the Compassionateness, and the All-embracing Mercy of the
Ruler of the Universe were taught to natives released from the foul
blight of idolatry in its worst form.
In this work of releasing the Faithful from their bondage to heathen
taskmasters, and bringing new light in a forcible fashion to the
barbarous and breechless natives, the Fulah did not stop till from
every village of the Central Sudan there was heard in the grey dawn
of the tropic morning the stentorian voice of the negro Mueddin,
announcing that prayer was better than sleep--bringing from out the
faintly illumined houses the devout Moslems to humble their faces in
the dust, and acknowledge their utter faith in and dependence on Allah.
No less thoroughly was the material welfare of the people cared for.
“The laws of the Koran were in his (Othman’s) time strictly put in
force, not only among the Fillahtah (Fulah), but the negroes and the
Arabs; and the whole country, when not in a state of war, was so well
regulated, that it was a common saying that a woman might travel with a
casket of gold upon her head from one end of the Fillahtah dominions to
the other.” So wrote Clapperton a few years after the death of Othman,
as eye-witness of the wonderful revolution effected by the Fulah.
Unhappily the religious fervour of the remarkable leader speedily
developed into religious mania, and ended in his death in 1817.
On the death of Othman, the huge empire he had raised was divided
between his sons Bello and Abd Allahi. To the former was given Sokoto
and all the east and south, while to the latter fell the western
provinces along the Niger, with Gandu as capital. The countries to
the west of the Niger, including Massina, became independent under
Ahmed Lebbo, one of Othman’s lieutenants, who conquered that region
immediately before the death of Othman.