The most celebrated woman scholar of the Sokoto Caliphate is Nana Asma’u (1793–1864), a daughter of Usman dan Fodio and the sister of Caliph Muhammad Bello. She was educated in the Qur’an and Islamic law, spoke several languages and composed poems in Arabic, Fulfulde, Hausa and other languages. Her works include elegies, histories of the jihad and advice for women and for rulers. Jean Boyd’s study The Caliph’s Sister (1989) is the standard biography.
Asma’u organised a network of women teachers, known as jajis, who travelled through the caliphate and taught women in their homes, using her poems as teaching texts, often memorised and chanted. Their students were known as ’yan taru, “the associates”. Women’s education thus took place in homes and in women’s circles, which makes it hard to see in the archives but important in practice.
The example matters for debates today. It shows that the founders of the caliphate saw women’s learning as a religious duty, and that a woman could be a respected authority within a framework of seclusion.