Usman dan Fodio

Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817), a Fulani scholar of Gobir in Hausaland, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate and its first caliph. A Qadiri Sufi and a Maliki jurist, he wrote more than a hundred books on the Islamic sciences and from 1804 led the jihad that overthrew the Hausa kingdoms and raised the largest Muslim state in West Africa of its age, then left the state's administration to his son Muhammad Bello and his brother Abdullahi and returned to teaching and writing.