Fula jihads

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Fula jihads" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Fula (or Fulani) jihads (Arabic: جهاد الفولا) sometimes called the Fulani revolution were a series of jihads that occurred across West Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries, led largely by the Muslim Fulani people. The jihads and the jihad states came to an end with European colonization.

The earliest Fulbe polity was established in Bundu in 1690. The first armed uprising took place in Futa Jallon in 1725, when Fula pastoralists, assisted by Muslim traders, rose against the indigenous chiefdoms. By 1750, the Fula had established the Imamate of Futa Jallon and placed the region under sharia law. Their success inspired the Toucouleurs on the banks of the lower Senegal to establish their own state, the Imamate of Futa Toro, through a series of wars between 1769 and 1776. In the early 19th century, the jihad movement spread eastward to the Hausa states. The revolutionary Usman dan Fodio, through a series of jihads begun in 1804, created the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest state in West Africa at that time. An aggressively expansionist polity, it severely weakened the old Bornu Kingdom.^[1]

Foremost among the motivators for the jihads was unity through the spread of religion, and the procurement of slaves by conquering neighbouring peoples.^[2]