Back to AfricAAR: The Sokoto Caliphate
This is a remake of The Sokoto Caliphate: In The Heart of AfricAAR
The old AAR was left "On Hold" due to lack of a "Post-Mahdi" line of writing and ideas. Now I'm taking back the project, rewriting an AAR based on the African Caliphate.
Now I'm using these settings:
Scenario: VIP Great Campaign
Difficulty: Very Hard
AI aggressiveness: Furious
Game Version:1.03c
V.I.P. Version: 0.4b
Difficulty: Very Hard
AI aggressiveness: Furious
Game Version:1.03c
V.I.P. Version: 0.4b
I have very different game conditions: in the old game the civilized world was joined mainly though "claim stealing". Now, as an uncivilized nation, I cannot steal claim building to the colonizing powers. Using V.I.P., the “civilizing event” is a little different: I only need 5 military points, 50 industrial score, 100 prestige. Looking at the game, the techs I know in 1836, the colonizing bans, I can say that the “hard part” is the industrial score.
The main goal of this AAR is "visiting" with the green horsemen all the african native nations, unite Africa under the green flag of the Caliphate and throw the Europeans into the sea...
I'll write some new events, based on historical information about Africa in Victorian Age.
The “technical informations” about the game play will be written using green text, the main narration will be left in the default color.
As a tribute to the original AAR, I use the same first post (with some little adjustment to fit the new AAR). But the story will go to a different way from the second post to the end. And now... Back to Africa!
***
In the first decade of the nineteenth century, two unrelated developments that were to have a major influence on virtually all of the area that is now Nigeria ushered in a period of radical change. First, between 1804 and 1808, the Islamic holy war of Usman dan Fodio established the Sokoto Caliphate, which not only expanded to become the largest empire in Africa since the fall of Songhai but also had a profound influence on much of Muslim Africa to the west and to the east. Second, in 1807 Britain declared the transatlantic slave trade to be illegal, an action that occurred at a time when Britain was responsible for shipping more slaves to the Americas than any other country. Although the transatlantic slave trade did not end until the 1860s, it was gradually replaced by other commodities, especially palm oil; the shift in trade had serious economic and political consequences in the interior, which led to increasing British intervention in the affairs of Yorubaland and the Niger Delta. The rise of the Sokoto Caliphate and the economic and political adjustment in the south strongly shaped the course of the colonial conquest at the end of the nineteenth century.
From the library of the US Congress
A group of Fulbe Noblemen
It's time to end my life as a lurker of the Tea Room and to speak about a voyage ended only by the end of my life . I've visited the greatest of the lost empires hidden in the heart of Africa.
I personally followed the history of this African Flower from it’s the first years of the Islamic Revolution to the beginning of the 19th century. I have seen the horsemen at the service of the young empire to carry the word of allah under their green flag through all Africa. I have seen what the industrial revolution has carried in one country where the men rambled barefoot and half of the population was reduced in Slavery.
I'm sure that this interesting story is not to be forget in the memories of single man.
Here to you the reports of my African explorations.
Lorenzo dei Capitani, surgeon and explorer under direction and patronage African Association of Kingdom of the Two Sicily
***
1st January 1836
Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen Sokoto City. I landed in an English port near the Niger Delta and followed a caravan in the interior. Two days later I leaved them to continue alone with my guide and the others natives that carry my belongings. The legitimate trade in commodities attracted a number of rough-hewn British merchants to the Niger River, as well as some men who had been formerly engaged in the slave trade but who now changed their line of wares. Maybe I landed in the same port where John and Richard Lander arrived 6 years ago. They followed the lower Niger River from Bussa to the sea, travelling in leaky canoes. Along the way they were kidnapped by the King of the Ibos, rescued by another king (King Boy of Brass), and were reluctantly helped by a British ship. Lander later published his "Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger"
In Red, starting from the west, you can see the trip of the Lander Brothers. In Green, starting from the south, you can see my trip to Sokoto City
Richard Lander died on his third West African trip (1833-1834). He was killed along the Niger River by African tribesmen on Feb. 6, 1834. I pray the Almighty to survive this exploration.
My guide, ‘Nganu, don’t like the actual Fulani Leadership. He was a son of an Hausa Warlord and the ritual signs on his face are signs of noblehood. But the Islamic revolt of the past years brought a new order in the region.
My indigenous guide, 'Nganu
By the late eighteenth century, many Muslim scholars and teachers had become disenchanted with the insecurity that characterized the Hausa states and Borno. Some clerics (mallams) continued to reside at the courts of the Hausa states and Borno, but others, who joined the Qadiriyah brotherhood, began to think about a revolution that would overthrow existing authorities. Prominent among these radical mallams was Usman dan Fodio, who with his brother and son, attracted a following among the clerical class. Many of his supporters were Fulani, and because of his ethnicity he was able to appeal to all Fulani, particularly the clan leaders and wealthy cattle owners whose clients and dependents provided most of the troops in the jihad that began in Gobir in 1804. Not all mallams were Fulani, however. The cleric whose actions actually started the jihad, Abd as Salam, was Hausa; Jibril, one of Usman dan Fodio's teachers and the first cleric to issue a call for jihad two decades earlier, was Tuareg. Nonetheless, by the time the Hausa states were overthrown in 1808, the prominent leaders were all Fulani.
A simple graph showing a summary of the population of the Caliphate in the early 1836. 3.847.000 people lived inside the borders of the Caliphate.
There is something strange about only 1.4% moralism after an islamic revolution...
Simultaneous uprisings confirmed the existence of a vast underground of Muslim revolutionaries throughout the Hausa states and Borno. By 1808 the Hausa states had been conquered, although the ruling dynasties retreated to the frontiers and built walled cities that remained independent. The more important of these independent cities included Abuja, where the ousted Zaria Dynasty fled; Argungu in the north, the new home of the Kebbi rulers; and Maradi in Niger, the retreat of the Katsina Dynasty. Although the Borno mai was overthrown and Birni Gazargamu destroyed, Borno did not succumb. The reason, primarily, was that another cleric, Al Kanemi, fashioned a strong resistance that eventually forced those Fulani in Borno to retreat west and south. In the end, Al Kanemi overthrew the centuries-old Sayfawa Dynasty of Borno and established his own lineage as the new ruling house. The new state that arose during Usman dan Fodio's jihad came to be known as the Sokoto Caliphate, named after his capital at Sokoto, founded in 1809. The caliphate was a loose confederation of emirates that recognized the suzerainty of the commander of the faithful, the sultan.
A polical map of the Caliphate in the early 1836. To the east the border with Borno, to the west the border with Masina
The 3 armies shown in the political map are 3 cavalry divisions that boost my starting military power to 3. Industrial score is 0, Prestige 0. No factories, no techs... An hard way in to civilization...
The goverment is a Monarchy with only public meetings allowed. Mahadist faction is in power (A conservative "party" with State Capitalism, Protectionism, Moralism, Residence, Pro Military), no social reforms granted.
The RGO of the caliphate produces a lot of cattle, some grain, a little of cotton, fruit and iron, trinkets of tropical wood and wool.
