War and wilderness – the Sokoto Jihad and its animal discourse

Abstract

This essay analyses how the Jihadists of Sokoto in pre-colonial West Africa (ca. 1800–1840) defined the Muslim ‘self’ and the alleged ‘pagan’ other. A study of various Jihadist voices documented in this historical era demonstrates the tremendous role of the civilization/wilderness divide across intellectual and colloquial discourses of common soldiers and political leaders. While wild animals were largely discredited as sources of meat or representatives of political and religious power, domestication of those animals useful for warfare was demanded. Horses and camels were especially venerated in praise and propaganda literature and glorified as the key to an authentic Islamic warfare in the style of Prophet Muhammad. Throughout Sokoto military expansion to the south (Southern Nigeria) and the east (Northern Cameroon), soldiers repeatedly faced very different landscapes, wildlife and human cultures. As a result, they re-evaluated what was human and what was animal. And this discussion in turn led to the general refusal of Sokoto Emirates to integrate traditional hunting societies as humans at all. The paper can thus emphasize a hitherto neglected section of Sokoto Jihadist ideology linked with the experience of violence in unknown territory and the construction of wilderness as the absolute and barbarian ‘other’.