The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, has visited the tomb of the famous Islamic religious teacher, Usman dan Fodio, in Sokoto State.
The tomb of the great scholar is located in Sokoto town near the famous Mosque of Shehu, which is near the Sultan of Sokoto’s palace.
The PDP presidential candidate shared a picture from the visit via his Twitter handle on Tuesday saying with a caption “My team and I just made a visit to the tomb of Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio. May Allah SWT continue to bless his memory. Amin. -AA”
The late Uthman Da Fodio was born on December 15th, 1754 and died on April 20th 1817. He was a Fulani scholar, Sunni Islamic religious teacher, revolutionary, and philosopher who founded the Sokoto Caliphate and ruled as its first caliph.
It is traditionally believed that Usman was an Arab descendant of the commander Uqba ibn Nafi. In early life, Usman became well-educated in Islamic studies and soon, he began to preach Sunni Islam throughout Nigeria and Cameroon.
He wrote more than a hundred books concerning religion, government, culture, and society. He developed a critique of existing African Muslim elites for what he saw as their greed, paganism, violation of the standards of the Sharia.
Usman formed and began an Islamic religious and social revolution which spread from Gobir throughout modern Nigeria and Cameroon, and was echoed in a jihad movement led by the Fula people across West Africa. In 1803, he founded the Sokoto Caliphate and his followers pledged allegiance to him as the Commander of the Faithful (Amīr al-Muʾminīn). Usman declared jihad against the Hausa Kings and defeated the kings.
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Under Usman’s leadership, the caliphate conquered Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Southern Niger and most of Northern Nigeria. Ɗan Fodio declined much of the pomp of rulership, and while developing contacts with religious reformists and jihad leaders across Africa, he soon passed actual leadership of the Sokoto state to his son, Muhammed Bello. He encouraged literacy and scholarship, for women as well as men, and several of his daughters emerged as scholars and writers. His writings and sayings continue to be much quoted today, and are often affectionately referred to as Shehu in Nigeria.
Some followers consider ɗan Fodio to have been “reformer of Islam”.Shehu ɗan Fodio’s uprising was a major episode of a movement described as the Fula jihads in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It followed the jihads successfully waged in Futa Bundu, Futa Tooro, and Fouta Djallon between 1650 and 1750, which led to the creation of those three Islamic states.
In his turn, the Shehu inspired a number of later West African jihads, including those of Seku Amadu, founder of the Massina Empire, Omar Saidou Tall, founder of the Toucouleur Empire, who married one of ɗan Fodio’s granddaughters, and Modibo Adama, founder of the Adamawa Emirate.
He died at the age of 63