he was unable to hold it and had to appeal for external assistance from Sokoto.21 The Nupe king, Etsu Yikanko, was killed but was succeeded by Jimada. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān supported Majiya for the position of etsu, however, and Majiya’s appointment was eventually achieved after Jimada was killed at Gbara on the Kaduna River near the confluence with the Niger. However, after the death of ʿUthmān dan Fodio in 1817 and the division of the caliphate into two spheres, Malam Dendo, who was a Fulbe leader, rose to prominence among the Muslims. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān owed his allegiance to ʿUthmān dan Fodio, but the Gwandu regime became the direct overlord of Nupe after 1817 and favored Malam Dendo. When British diplomat Hugh Clapperton was at Kulfo in 1826, he was in contact with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the “learned malam,” whose influence was much reduced, although he was still revered as a pioneer of jihād and a saint.22 By then the shifting politics of Nupe had placed him at odds with Dendo, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was murdered three years later. Michael Mason has established conclusively the complicity of Dendo in the assassination, suggesting a plot to undermine indigenous Nupe leadership.23
Because of shifting alliances, the course of the jihād was confusing. Nupe was now involved in a protracted civil war that lasted until 1857, when Bida was finally established as the capital of a Nupe emirate.24 The various candidates for succession to the Nupe kingship sought the support of the jihād leadership but then attempted to limit the influence of the Muslim leadership, which prevented an easy transition. Majiya, who was located at Zugurma, had been Dendo’s student and had initially supported ʿAbd al-Raḥmān in 1810–12. He consolidated his rule after Jimada was killed.25 Majiya then established his capital at Raba on the Niger.26 Jimada’s son Idrīsu and the supporters of Jimada fled to Ilorin. Majiya attempted to consolidate his position as etsu between 1820 and 1824 by turning on his Muslim allies, who also moved to Ilorin. Malam Dendo then formed an alliance with Idrīsu and the exiled Nupe faction. Majiya attacked Ilorin in 1823–24 but was defeated and driven back across the Niger River. Malam Dendo occupied Raba, while Idrīsu was now recognized as etsu.
In the course of this uncertainty, the two small emirates of Lafiagi and Agaie were established on the south side of the Niger around 1824. To make matters even more confusing, Idrīsu then turned on the Muslims and after 1825 tried to drive them out of Raba, which forced Dendo to reestablish an alliance with Majiya. In early 1826 Gwandu sent an army to support Dendo, and the Gwandu forces returned with one thousand slaves and four thousand gowns, Nupe being a center of textile production.27 When Clapperton entered Nupe in April 1826, Idrīsu had just been driven out of Raba, and it looked as if Majiya was firmly in control of the etsu throne at Jangi, with Dendo behind the scenes in Raba nearby. Although the allied forces of Ilorin Muslims had supported Idrīsu in defeating Majiya, forcing Majiya to withdraw to Tabria in 1825, Dendo changed his mind and apparently summoned his former student to Raba for his submission. Meanwhile, Idrīsu regrouped, with the support of Beni river traders who had access to firearms from the Niger River trade, and persisted in his bid for the throne. Nonetheless, Majiya reigned until his death around 1841.28 Malam Dendo died in 1833, but the succession to the emirship was contested. Usman Zaki became emir at Raba, but his brother Masaba refused to recognize him and settled at Lade near Lafiagi on the south of the Niger. Civil war continued, now among the Muslims, not the claimants to the Nupe throne. A settlement was reached only in 1857 with the foundation of Bida as the capital of a united Nupe emirate.29
The uprising in the military at Ilorin in 1817 and the subsequent incorporation of Ilorin as an emirate into the Sokoto Caliphate in 1823 has special significance in linking the jihād movement as a major event in Atlantic history with the age of revolutions. The concentration of Muslims in the military undermined Oyo’s hegemony in the interior of the Bight of Benin and made it clear that jihād was a continuous affair of expansion that combined ethnicity and religion in a tenuous union. Ilorin formally became an emirate in 1823 when the son of Alimi Ṣāliḥ, ʿAbd al-Salām, became its first emir, reporting to Abdullahi dan Fodio at Gwandu and not Muhammad Bello at Sokoto. Meanwhile, Dahomey, tributary to Oyo since the 1730s, asserted its independence at the same time, thereby placing Oyo in a delicate position that relied on support from Borgu and involved Oyo in the confrontation in Nupe. The results were disastrous, as reflected in the emigration to the south of refugees who wanted nothing to do with Islam, founding new centers at Ibadan, at Abeokuta, and elsewhere.30
Ilorin was particularly important because of the role it played in the collapse of Oyo and the subsequent migration of Yoruba to Cuba and Brazil and indirectly to Sierra Leone and Trinidad, as well as the transformation of much of the interior of the Bight of Benin. The attempt of Are Anakamfo to achieve autonomy within Oyo by using his position as general of the alafin’s army to force the hand of the Oyo aristocracy at the capital unintentionally released the forces of jihād. Traditionally, the alafin could not personally go to war but had to depend on the titled officials of the Oyo Mesi, the council of state, which resulted in periodic tension and outright crisis. In the middle of the eighteenth century Basorun Gaha, the leading official of the Oyo Mesi, usurped power from the alafin. If the Oyo Mesi voted against the alafin’s continuation, the alafin had to commit suicide, a proviso that Basorun Gaha manipulated to his advantage several times until the rise of Alafin Abiodun, who reigned until 1789. Because the alafin could not appear on the battlefield, Abiodun promoted his military position through an army stationed at Ilorin under a subordinate official with the title are ona kakanfo, which Afonja held at the time of the uprising in 1817. However, Afonja’s political ambitions backfired because the 1817 uprising was virtually a military coup d’état, so that Afonja remained in power, but power increasingly shifted to the proponents of jihād. Most of the military were enslaved young Muslims who had come from farther north and were Muslims and hence were susceptible to the appeal of ʿUthmān dan Fodio. Under the leadership of Alimi Ṣāliḥ, the Muslim faction steadily promoted the cause of Islamic uprising. Bands of Fulbe roamed the countryside, attacking villages and enslaving people. Conflict between Oyo and Ijesha over control of the trade routes to the coast erupted into warfare, known as the Owu wars, that led to the destruction of the Owu province and the migration of refugees to the south.31
Because of the jihād in Oyo, the capital district of Oyo was completely abandoned by 1836 through flight and slavery; the previously heavily populated region around the capital was transformed into a virtual desert, which it remains largely to this day. The conflict is often referred to as the Yoruba wars in the scholarly literature and is sometimes even characterized as a civil war; it is clear that the establishment of Ilorin as a recognized part of the Sokoto Caliphate was more than a civil disturbance, and, even more relevant, that the jihād was primarily responsible for the collapse of the Oyo state and the concurrent and subsequent warfare that resulted in the enslavement of the overwhelming majority of people who became part of the Yoruba diaspora.32 Hence the resulting activities of Yoruba in both Cuba and Brazil have to be considered, in my opinion, as an outgrowth of the jihād movement of West Africa, not merely an extension of slave resistance that was associated with the age of revolutions. The complexities of ethnicity and the struggle that arose from religious conflict affect an interpretation of the Malês uprising in Bahia and also Yoruba resistance in Cuba and Muslim unrest in Sierra Leone.33 By the time of Muhammad Bello’s death in 1837, Ilorin had successfully established its supremacy over the northern Yoruba country under Fulani leadership, while opposition to jihād was firmly established at the new Yoruba centers to the south, especially at Ibadan. Where Oyo had once controlled an extensive part of Yorubaland that stretched to the sea at Porto Novo and Badagry and included Dahomey, its port at Ouidah, Mahi country, and parts of Borgu, its territory was steadily whittled away by 1836.
Bishop Samuel Crowther, himself of Oyo origin, attributed the destruction of Oyo towns in the 1820s to Muslims, whom he called Fulani even though many spoke Yoruba, and whose origins beyond that cannot always be determined.34 Similarly, Clapperton and his servant, John Lander, reported the destruction of towns in the 1820s, which they attributed to Muslims, whom they also identified as Fulani. These accounts are based on their personal observations while traveling from Badagry to Katunga,
