Sokoto

Sokoto is a young city by the standards of the Hausa lands around it. When Usman dan Fodio launched his jihad against the Hausa kings in 1804, his movement had no fixed capital; after the war his son Muhammad Bello founded the town in 1809 as a ribat, a fortified frontier settlement, and it became the seat of the new caliphate. From here the Sultan, as commander of the faithful, presided over emirs ruling Kano, Katsina, Zaria and many other cities across what is now northern Nigeria and parts of Niger and Cameroon — one of the largest states in nineteenth-century Africa.

Usman dan Fodio himself died in 1817 and was buried in the town; his tomb, the Hubbare, remains the city's most visited religious site. The caliphate's scholars made Sokoto a centre of Arabic learning and manuscript writing, and its craftsmen supplied leather, cloth and metalwork to the trans-Saharan trade.

British forces under Frederick Lugard took Sokoto in 1903. The reigning Sultan, Attahiru I, left the city rather than submit and was killed later that year; the British installed a successor and then governed through the sultanate itself under indirect rule, which preserved the office and much of its prestige. In the twentieth century Sokoto's leaders were central to northern Nigerian politics: Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, led the Northern Region at independence. Sokoto State was created in 1976, and the city has grown as its capital, a university town and the religious focus of Nigerian Islam.

The Sultan of Sokoto is the most senior traditional Muslim authority in Nigeria, consulted on religious questions far beyond the city and chairing the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs; the announcement of the start and end of Ramadan from Sokoto is followed across the country. That authority shapes the city's sense of itself as a place of scholarship rather than commerce.

Islamic learning is everywhere: Qur'anic schools in the compounds, Arabic manuscripts copied and studied for two centuries, and a university named for the founder of the caliphate. The population is overwhelmingly Hausa and Fulani, with Hausa as the everyday language and Fulfulde still spoken in the scholarly and herding families. Dress is formal and distinctive — embroidered babban riga robes and caps for men, wrappers and veils for women.

At Eid the city turns out for the durbar, when horsemen and camel riders in bright robes and quilted trappings ride before the Sultan's palace in salute, a custom shared with Kano, Katsina and Zaria. Weddings and naming ceremonies are large, formal and central to social life, and hospitality to strangers is a point of honour. Leatherwork is the craft the town is best known for: goatskins from the Sokoto Red breed were traded north across the Sahara, and northern Nigerian goatskin reached Europe under the name Morocco leather.

Sokoto is a state capital of several hundred thousand people: the 2006 census counted over 427,760 in the city, and it has grown considerably since. Its economy rests on government — the state civil service, courts and schools — together with the university and its teaching hospital, trade in farm produce, and a cement plant opened near the city in 2022.

The country around the city is farmland watered by the Rima and Sokoto rivers and by irrigation schemes: rice, millet, sorghum, onions and vegetables, with Fulani herders moving cattle, sheep and goats through the dry savanna. Tanning and leatherworking survive in workshops in the older quarters, though far less than in the caliphate's heyday.

The day follows the five prayer times. Markets and offices open early, the middle of the day is slow in the heat, and business picks up again in the late afternoon before evening gatherings over sweet tea. Friday prayers are the fixed point of the week. Poverty rates in the state are among the highest in Nigeria and many children, especially girls, are out of school. Banditry in the rural areas has pushed families off their farms and into the city, adding pressure on housing, water and jobs.

Sokoto eats the grain-based food of the Hausa north. Tuwo shinkafa, a soft mash of pounded rice, and tuwo made from millet or sorghum are the everyday staple, served with miyan kuka, a dark soup of dried baobab leaves, or miyan taushe, made from pumpkin and groundnuts. Rice with a tomato and pepper stew is the other common plate, and dan wake, dumplings of bean flour tossed with oil and pepper, is a cheap filling lunch.

Meat matters here. Suya, skewers of beef rubbed with yaji, a peppery groundnut spice mix, is grilled at roadside stalls once the sun goes down, and kilishi, beef sliced paper-thin, spiced and dried in the sun, is the north's great travelling food and a standard gift to take home. Dambun nama, shredded spiced beef, is another way of preserving meat.

Mornings bring masa, small rice cakes cooked in a dimpled iron pan, and kosai, fried bean fritters, from street stalls. Fura da nono — balls of millet dough mixed with fermented cow's milk — is sold by Fulani women and drunk as a meal in itself. Kunu, a light millet drink, zobo made from hibiscus, and strong sweet tea are the everyday refreshments. Alcohol is not sold openly under the state's sharia law.