[5][6] It was dissolved when the British, French, and Germans conquered the area in 1903 and annexed it into the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate, Senegambia and Niger and Kamerun respectively.

[11] Although European colonists abolished the political authority of the caliphate, the title of sultan was retained and remains an important religious position for Sunni Muslims in the region to the current day.

[10] The legacy of the Sokoto Caliphate and Usman dan Fodio's teachings have left a lasting impact on the region's history, including contemporary Nigeria and West Africa.

The Sokoto era produced some of the most renowned writers in West Africa with the three main reformist leaders, Usman, Abdullahi and Bello, writing more than three hundred books combined on a wide variety of topics, including logic, tafsir, mathematics, governance, law, astronomy, grammar, medicine, and so on.

[18] The region between the Niger River and Lake Chad was largely populated with the Fulani, the Hausa, and other ethnic groups that had immigrated to the area such as the Tuareg.

[16] The Fulani used guerrilla warfare to turn the conflict in their favor, and gathered support from the civilian population, which had come to resent the despotic rule and high taxes of the Hausa kings.

[20] Much of the growth of the state occurred through the establishment of an extensive system of ribats as part of the consolidation policy of Muhammed Bello, the second Sultan.

These proved crucial in expansion through developing new cities, settling the pastoral Fulani people, and supporting the growth of plantations which were vital to the economy.

By this time, the Caliphate had grown into one of the largest empires in Africa, extending over present-day northern Nigeria, parts of Niger, Cameroon, and Benin.

[11] The Nupe Kingdom, historically a powerful state in Central Nigeria, was conquered by the Sokoto Caliphate in the early 19th century as part of its expansionist campaigns.

[30] The 19th century was a period of significant Islamic reform and jihads in West Africa, and the Sokoto Caliphate was just one of several powerful states that emerged during this time.

[28] The Massina Empire, also known as the Diina of Hamdullahi, was an early 19th-century Fulani Jihad state centered in the Inner Niger Delta area of present-day Mali.

It was founded by El Hadj Umar Tall, an Islamic leader of Tukulor descent, who sought to establish a jihadist state and conquer and enslave the polytheists in the region.

[33] However, following the Berlin Conference, the British had expanded into Southern Nigeria, and by 1901 had begun to move into the Sokoto Caliphate while simultaneous German efforts occurred in Cameroon.

British General Frederick Lugard used rivalries between many of the emirs in the south and the central Sokoto administration to prevent any defense as he marched toward the capital,[34] while the Germans conquered Adamawa.

[35] Muslim supporters and officials moved from Hausaland, Segu, Massina and Adamawa towards to Burmi, a military station on the far-eastern border of the Empire.

[citation needed] The early rulers of Sokoto, dan Fodio and Bello, abolished systems of hereditary succession, preferring leaders to be appointed by virtue of their Islamic scholarship and moral standing.

[18] Emirs were appointed by the sultan; they traveled yearly to pledge allegiance and deliver taxes in the form of crops, cowry shells, and slaves.

Scholars Burnham and Last claim that this Islamic scholarship community provided an "embryonic bureaucracy" which linked the cities throughout the Sokoto state.

Shaikh Uthman dan Fodio's book, Bayan wujab al-hijra, justifies the existence of the position in the caliphate:The first pillar [of a kingdom] is an upright wazir (vizier) over the wilaya who wakens [the king] if he sleeps and gives him sight if he cannot see and reminds him if he is heedless.

[23] Parfait-Louis Monteil, the french explorer who visited the caliphate in 1890, claimed that he witnessed Sultan Umaru bin Ali raise "an army of forty thousand men, half of whom were cavalry, to lay siege to Argungu.

This not only perpetuated the plantation’s social order, but also reduced the slave-owner’s expenditures; by freeing elderly and infirm slaves, the owner did not have to pay for their care.

In 1829 Bain Hugh Clapperton wrote: "In this space is also the prison, a building of about eighty feet long, and nearly the same in breadth, covered at top with a flat clay roof, overlaid with boughs.

"[58] If not desiring sale the slave-owner would lay out the particular charge and "Thereafter, the erring slave was admitted into the facility through a succession of two doors, being severely beaten in the process.

This wall was pierced with holes at its base through which the legs of those sentenced to death were thrust up to the thigh, and they were left to be trodden on by the mass of other prisoners till they died of thirst and starvation.

For example, the Jihadist militant group Ansaru has vowed to revive the Sokoto Caliphate in order to restore the "lost dignity of Muslims in black Africa".

While they have occasionally referenced Usman dan Fodio's legacy to justify their actions, presenting their struggle as a continuation of the original jihad, there are fundamental differences between the two jihadist movements.

The three leaders of the jihad, namely Usman, Abdullahi and Bello, drew heavily from Maliki and Qadriyya texts, with connections to wider Islamic intellectual networks.

While the Sokoto Caliphate had limited success in fully subjugating Bornu, Boko Haram, founded by Muhammad Yusuf and later led by Shekau, emerged from the Kanuri community.

They sought to return to what they perceived as more orthodox practices based on Salafi thought, rejecting the Maliki law and Sufi influences of the Sokoto Caliphate.