Nana Asma'u

Nana Asma'u (1793–1864), full name Asma'u bint Shehu Usman dan Fodiyo, was a scholar, poet and teacher of the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa, a daughter of its founder Usman dan Fodio and a half-sister of its second Sultan, Muhammad Bello. ¹

She wrote more than sixty works in Arabic, Fula, Hausa and Tamacheq, and built the 'Yan Taru network of travelling women teachers who taught women in their homes across the Caliphate. She remains a revered figure in northern Nigeria. ¹

She was born in 1793 in the remote community of Degel and named after Asma bint Abi Bakr (may God be pleased with her). Her childhood passed through the Fulani War (1804–1808), the campaign that established the Sokoto Caliphate. ¹

Like her father, she was educated in tafsir and the Islamic sciences. The dan Fodio family, exemplars of the Qadiriyya Sufis, held that knowledge not taught is sterile, and she devoted herself in particular to the education of women. ¹

She became a counsellor to her brother Muhammad Bello when he took the Caliphate, recorded written instructions to governors, debated the scholars of foreign princes, and wrote about the wars she had witnessed in her prose narrative Wakar Gewaye, "The Song of Wandering". ¹

She died in 1864 according to Wikipedia and Wikidata; Jean Boyd's scholarly biography carries the years 1793–1865 in its title, and the discrepancy is recorded here openly. ^{1 2}

She left more than sixty works written over forty years — poetry and prose in Arabic, Fula, Hausa and Tamacheq, all in the Arabic script — including historical narratives, elegies, laments and admonitions that analysed social conflict, religious reform and the ethics of leadership, and became tools for teaching the Caliphate's founding principles. ¹

Writing much of her work in local languages in Arabic script ('ajami) carried her scholarship beyond the Arabic-literate elite, to rural women, non-Arabic speakers and newly Islamised communities. ¹

From about 1830 she created the 'Yan Taru network: a cadre of women teachers called jajis, who travelled throughout the Caliphate teaching women in their homes, using her poems and mnemonic verses, and receiving from her the malfa hat and red turban as symbols of office. The network also provided marital guidance, help in childbirth and communal counselling. ^{1 3}

The project began in part as a way to integrate newly conquered captives into the new state, and expanded to include the poor and the rural population across the sprawling Caliphate. ¹

Her father was Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817), founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, and her half-brother Muhammad Bello (died 1837) was its second Sultan, with whom she worked closely as counsellor. Neither yet has a record in this museum, so they are named here in prose without a formal relation. ¹

Her sisters Maryam and Fatima, and her father's wives Aisha and Hawwa'u, also played major literary and political roles in the new state. ¹

Her one formal relation recorded in this museum is her membership of the Qadiriyya Sufi order, of which her father and his followers were exemplars, and whose teaching of the sunnah shaped her life's work. ^{1 3}

Today in northern Nigeria, Islamic women's organisations, schools and meeting halls are commonly named for her, and her legacy re-entered the debate on the role of women in Islam in the twentieth century. ¹

Modern scholarship on her is extensive: Jean Boyd's The Caliph's Sister (1989), Boyd and Beverly B. Mack's Collected Works of Nana Asma'u (1997), and their One Woman's Jihad (2000). ^{1 3}

In 2019 the governor of Sokoto State directed that land be provided for a planned Nana Asma'u University of Medical Sciences in Sokoto. ¹

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