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Abstract
This article outlines the history of Shiism in Kano State. Most existing studies on Shiism in Nigeria focus exclusively on the political activism of Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his Islamic Movement in Nigeria (formerly, Muslim Brothers). This article, on the contrary, tries to bring to light the activities of a variety of Shia actors, including Lebanese migrants, Iranian officials, and competing networks of Nigerian Shiites (Zakzaky's IMN and Nur Dass' Rasului A'zam Foundation). The diversification of Shia actors - this article argues - can be explained as the result of the complexities of the social and religious space of Kano; as the reflection of changing Iranian policies over the years; or as a combination of both factors.
Islam in Nigeria: The Background
The traditional Islamic groups in Nigeria for the past centuries have been the two Sufi orders, the Qadiriyya and the Tijaniyya. The former is named after Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani; a scholar andjurisprudent who rose to prominence in Baghdad in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.1 The latter's eponym is Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani (1735-1815) who was born in 'Ayn Madi (a village in the Algerian desert) into a family of learned scholars, and established a Sufi ţarlqa around the claim of being the "seal of saints" (khātim al-awliya).2
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the face of Islam in northern Nigeria was changed by a jihad waged by Shaykh Usman Ban Fodio (1754-1817), a religious scholar and reformer who fought the rulers of Hausaland condemning the superficial practice of religion and syncretism which was the order of the day at the beginning of the nineteenth century,3 successfully establishing an Islamic state, known as the Sokoto Caliphate. Ban Fodio was a Qadiri, and thus the Qadiriyya became the official doctrine of the new state. The Tijaniyya, on the other hand, after having been introduced in Nigeria by the leader of another nineteenth-century West African jihad, al-Hajj Umar al-Futi (d. 1864), experienced an unprecedented development after the major leaders of the order (mainly based in Kano and Zaria) affiliated themselves with the Senegalese scholar Ibrahim Niasse, who had claimed to be the depository of the divine flood (sahib al-fayda) of Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani.4
The virtual monopoly of the Sufi orders over the...