Legend · 1817 to present
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The man who founded the Sokoto Caliphate was buried in a room of his own home. That home became a royal cemetery, divided among his children's families, where pilgrims come every day, some scattering grain on the graves in hope of a good harvest.
In the old city of Sokoto there is a place that receives visitors every single day. It is called Hubbaren Shehu, and in 2021 the Daily Trust described it as the most visited historic site in the city. It is a cemetery, the burial ground of Sokoto's royal families. But before it was a cemetery, it was a house.
It was the home of Usman dan Fodio, the Islamic reformer whom people across the Hausa-speaking North simply call the Shehu. He died on 20 April 1817. He was not carried away to some separate burial ground. He was buried right there, inside his own house, in the room of one of his wives, Hauwa'u. She was the mother of Muhammadu Bello, who became the first Sultan of Sokoto. Beside the Shehu's tomb lie two of his sons, Sambo and Hassan.
Over time the house filled with graves. The Shehu's lieutenants were buried there, and so were later sultans, who were his direct descendants. The ground was shared out according to the number of his children, so that each branch of the family would have its own place to bury its dead. According to the man who looks after the site, Alhaji Bala Ibrahim, eight sultans rest there. The most recent, when he spoke, was Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki. Some notable people who were not of the royal family were buried there too, among them Umaru Ali Shinkafi and a former Eze-Igbo of Sokoto, Dr Muhammadu Nweke.
The other rooms where the Shehu's wives lived are still lived in by women. The reporter could not find out whether they were his descendants.
Alhaji Bala's title is Mai Bude Hubbare, the one who opens the Hubbare. Visitors come from across Nigeria and beyond, he said, men and women, and of different races. The crowds are heaviest on Thursdays and Fridays, and at their very biggest during Eid el-Kabir, Maulud and Shura. At those times the two guest houses cannot hold everyone, and the families let pilgrims sleep in their own homes.
Walk in through the main entrance and the first thing you reach is Jangirde. It was the school where the Shehu taught his students. Near it was a part of the house where his wives are said to have lived, and a burial ground.
From there a long path leads to the Shehu's tomb, and along it women and children line up asking visitors for alms. The most common gift, the reporter noticed, was grain. There is a reason for that. Some villagers bring grain to Hubbare and spread it on the graves, hoping it will bring them a big harvest in the next farming season.
Not everyone at Hubbare approves. One of the guides explained that people had been taken on to teach pilgrims the proper manners of visiting graves, so that they would not do things that go against Islam. Some visitors simply do not know, he said. Spreading grain on the graves of the Shehu's great lieutenants is one of the things he called very wrong, and part of his job was to teach them what to do and what to say instead.
He also explained why some come at all. A number of the visitors, he said, are people who could not manage the journey to the holy land to visit the tomb of the Prophet. So they come to Sokoto to visit the tomb of the Shehu instead.
The reporter met one such pilgrim, Malam Shehu, a nomad from Kayama in Kwara State. He had come to Sokoto to collect his daughter-in-law, and took the chance to visit. "This is the place I've always wanted to visit," he said, and he hoped to come again the next year. He asked the reporter for one thing: a photograph of Jangirde, so that he could show his people at home that he had really been there.
Alhaji Bala said the Fulani are the most regular visitors, perhaps because the Shehu was one of them, though people of other groups come as well. The keepers use the crowds to preach peace and unity. He admitted the place was not always clean, and blamed the sheer number of visitors, but said they were doing their best to keep it clean and safe. The section for other prominent people, the reporter noted, badly needed care. Business around Hubbare, meanwhile, never slows.
Who was the man in the room? Usman dan Fodio was born on 15 December 1754 in the village of Maratta, in the Hausa kingdom of Gobir. He studied law, theology and philosophy at Agadez, in today's Niger Republic, under a scholar named Jibril ibn Umar, and his learning earned him the name Sheikh Usman.
He went home to Gobir and began to preach to people who, in his view, were mixing older beliefs with Islam. He became so popular that the king of Gobir saw him as a danger and tried to have him killed. He escaped, and moved from village to village, preaching, teaching and writing.
In 1803 he and hundreds of followers moved to a place called Gudu. There he declared a holy war against King Yunfa of Gobir, and in 1804 he declared it across the whole of Hausaland. Many people joined his army. By 1808 his forces had taken Gobir, Kano and other Hausa states. He himself left the fighting in 1811 to go back to teaching and writing, though his armies fought on until 1815.
Out of all this came the Sokoto Caliphate, an empire of emirates, many of them built on the old Hausa states. It became the strongest power in the region in the 19th century, stretching over most of what is now northern Nigeria and into Niger and northern Cameroon. Its founder lies in a room of the house where he taught.
