The historical and sociological significance of warfare and its appurtenant institutions in the emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate has generally been overlooked or underestimated. In part, this neglect is attributable to the conventional preoccupation of historians with political history, which relegates military factors to the background. Additionally, historians of Muslim polities in Africa have often been engrossed in the study of their distinctive Islamic institutions. These and other preoccupations, although understandable and defensible in themselves, have obscured the possibilities for research in African military history.

In this study we have examined certain aspects of the military history of the emirates that comprised the Sokoto Caliphate in the nineteenth century. In particular, our central concern has been the elucidation of the two important revolutions in warfare, military technology, and army organization. The first revolution, the development of a military organization and tactical methods based on the extensive use of light cavalry, took place during the jihad, as mounted combat with swords and lances eclipsed the earlier technique of long-range fighting with missile weapons (bow and arrow) by infantry forces. By the middle of the century the emirates established during the jihad had evolved an elaborate feudal military complex of considerable offensive and defensive potential. On the one hand, this military system included a mobile offensive organization composed of specialized cavalry and infantry forces. The emirs retained only a small permanent force at the capital and relied on mass mobilization of territorial reserves to constitute a field army. Combat units were equipped with a remarkable assortment of armaments and armor, and were capable of executing rudimentary tactical maneuvers in battle.