highly useful to the new caliphate. Of the 29 female
scholars known by name, several of dan Fodio’s
daughters were outstanding leaders, including Mar-
yam, Fatima, and Asma±u. Nana Asma±u (1793–
1864) is the most famous. Her brother Caliph
Muhammad Bello recognized and used her creative
and organizational talents in furthering his aim of
promoting Islam to women.
An important development in the consolidation
of the post-jihadic state occurred in the 1830s when
Asma±u directed her educational message to rural
women. She identified senior village women and
authorized them to bring groups of girls and grand-
mothers to her. Their task was to memorize the
verses she composed for them and then to return
home and teach others. These associates, the famed
Yan Taru, flourished for decades and continue to
make their journeys to Sokoto in the twenty-first
century. The room she used as a classroom is still in
use today, 140 years after her death.
Asma±u’s deep concern for the women at the
fringes of society ensured that her memory lived on,
but it was her scholarly writings that guaranteed
her fame. In more than 60 works, written over a
period of 40 years in three languages, she expressed
herself on a variety of subjects. Her translation of
her father’s poem Tabbat Hakika (Be sure of this)
on rights and responsibilities in an Islamic state is
now part of the Sokoto tradition together with her
history of the jihad, Wakar Gewaye (The journey).
Nothing so convincingly shows how her influence
spread from the world of women to that of men as
the elegant verses she exchanged with scholars such
as a visiting Mauritanian shaykh or the admonish-
ment she sent to a misbehaving provincial gover-
nor. Interviewed in 2003 on the eve of the 200th
anniversary of the caliphate, Alhaji Mohammadu
Maccido, the Sultan of Sokoto, said that Asma±u
primarily helped women because as a woman she
was limited to teaching them rather than men, but
her knowledge was of benefit to everyone, men and
women alike.
sub-saharan africa: west africa 329Hajiya Sa≠adiya Omar, Director of the Centre for
Hausa Studies at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, is
the leader of the Sokoto branch of the Federation of
Muslim Women’s Associations of Nigeria (FOM-
WAN). Interviewed on Nigerian television in 2003,
she spoke of the meaning Asma’u’s life had for her
and for her four female colleagues who appeared
on the same program – a physician, a lecturer in
modern European languages, a librarian, and an
engineer:The aim of FOMWAN is to upgrade the status of
Muslim women through increasing their religious
awareness and education – exactly what Nana Asma±u
did. She mobilized women and brought them together,
she taught and reformed them making them better
members of society. Our inspiration came from her and
we look on her as a model. Whatever we achieve is
indigenous. Our ideas do not come from the United
States, nor the United Kingdom, nor from Saudi
Arabia. We have our model here. We may learn from
others but our upbringing, our development is through
Nana Asma±u.Bibliography
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