The Battle of Alkalawa

After the victory at Tabkin Kwotto in June 1804, Alkalawa was the logical next step. The city was the capital of Gobir, the walled heart from which Yunfa exercised his power. Whoever took Alkalawa ended Gobir.

Between 1805 and 1807 the jama’a undertook three assaults on the city. None of the three succeeded.

The first attack, in 1805, came too soon. The jama’a did not yet have sufficient supplies for a long siege. Yunfa kept the gates closed, his archers manned, and waited until the attackers felt hunger and fatigue.

The second attack, in 1806, broke down on coordination. Units from different banners reached the city on different days. The vanguard was isolated by sallies of Gobir cavalry before the main force arrived.

The third attack, in 1807, failed because of the monsoon rains. The ground around Alkalawa turned to mud. Siege equipment did not advance. Supplies spoiled. The jama’a had to withdraw before the city fell.

Three failures is a poor ratio in a young state. The jihad had achieved a great victory at Tabkin Kwotto, but without Alkalawa the struggle remained undecided. Muhammad Bello ﵀, the son of the Shehu and his foremost field commander, understood that a fourth attempt could not fail.

In October 1808, Muhammad Bello ﵀ assembled a new coalition. He learned from the three failures. An attack on Alkalawa had to be coordinated, supplied for weeks, and carried out in the dry season.

Bello shared command with Ali Jedo, the leader of an experienced warrior corps, and with Aliyu Jedo. Reinforcements came from Kebbi and Zamfara, two states that had joined the jama’a after Tabkin Kwotto and now wished to settle their own account with Gobir.

The force that gathered around Alkalawa was larger than ever. Bello chose an encirclement, not a frontal thrust. Four columns moved at once: one from the north, one from the south, one from the east, one from the west. No Gobir sally could threaten more than one of the four columns at a time.

Yunfa saw the encirclement from the towers of Alkalawa. He closed the gates and stationed his best defenders on the walls. He counted on the rains coming again, on the supplies of the attackers spoiling, on the coordination breaking as it had in 1806.

The rain stayed away. The supplies held. The coordination held.

In the first days after the arrival of the four columns, the ring closed around Alkalawa. Bello had skirmish parties operate before the walls, not to storm them, but to compel the Gobir archers to use up their arrows. Supply lines between the city and the surrounding villages were cut.

Yunfa ordered a sortie. A group of cavalry rode out through the southern gate, hoping to punch a gap in the southern column of Ali Jedo. The attack was caught. The riders who did not fall at once were driven back to the gate. The gate could not be closed quickly enough before a few Sokoto warriors pushed through. The breach was halted by the Gobir defenders, but the weakness of the southern gate had become visible.

Bello shifted his attention to the eastern wall. There the slope of the wall was the most favorable for an assault, and there was Aliyu Jedo, a commander experienced in urban fighting.

Under cover of arrow fire from the Sokoto camp, ladders and tree trunks were prepared. The Gobir defenders on the eastern wall were exhausted from four days of unbroken pressure. Yunfa sent his own bodyguard to the eastern wall, in a final effort to reinforce the weak point.

On the fifth night the assault began.

The assault began before sunrise. Aliyu Jedo sent his pioneers against the eastern wall, with cover from archers shooting in waves. First came the ladders. When the first ladders were thrown down, came the tree trunks against the wall as battering rams.

The wall of Alkalawa was of clay, not of stone. It held against the first ram blow, cracked at the second, crumbled at the third. An opening of several meters opened up. Through that opening the first Sokoto warriors pressed inside.

The fight now became urban. In the narrow streets of Alkalawa, Bello’s numerical superiority could not fully unfold, but neither could Yunfa deploy his cavalry. It became a house-to-house struggle, with knives, short swords and spears at arm’s length.

From the north, Bello saw the eastern breach and ordered pressure on the northern gate as well. The Gobir defenders were forced to split themselves. A second breach formed in the northern wall. Two fronts inside the city the remaining Gobir warriors could no longer encompass.

Yunfa himself fell back with his bodyguard to the center of the city, to the palace space around his throne. He was a sultan fighting in his own residence. What had earlier been a battle became now a last defense.

The last fight took place at the heart of the city, not far from Yunfa’s throne. According to Bello’s own account in Infaq al-Maysur, Yunfa died in hand-to-hand combat, his sword still in his hand.

He fought without flight. The sultan who years before had ordered the persecution of the jama’a, who had declared the scholar Usman dan Fodio ﵀ his enemy, who had sent the arrow that made the Hijrah to Gudu, fell within the walls of his own palace.

With his death the state of Gobir came to an end. The remaining Gobir warriors fought on for a few hours more, some to the last man, others surrendering. By midday the city was in the hands of the Sokoto coalition.

Bello ordered the population to be spared. Non-combatants were spared. Aliyu Jedo and Ali Jedo saw to the ordering of the prisoners and the gathering of the wounded. The scholars among the jama’a declared that the bloodshed was to stop as soon as the sultan had fallen.

But the city itself Bello would not spare.

Bello decided not to occupy Alkalawa. He had the city dismantled. Walls were leveled, palace buildings broken down, supplies distributed. The inhabitants who wished to leave were given permission. Those who wished to remain did so under the new order.

The choice was no act of revenge. Alkalawa as a symbol was more dangerous than Alkalawa as a ruin. An inhabited Gobir capital would continue to summon up a claim of restoration. A demolished Gobir capital closed that chapter.

With the fall of Alkalawa, the Gobir state as an independent power was ended. The military aims of the jihad had been achieved. Power in the region passed to the jama’a and to Usman dan Fodio ﵀ as Amir al-Mu’minin.

The caliphate that arose from this would later bear the name Sokoto. Muhammad Bello ﵀ would in 1809 found the city of Sokoto as the new capital. Abdullahi dan Fodio ﵀ received the administration of the western part, with Gwandu as its center. At its height the state stretched from the eastern part of present-day Burkina Faso to the western parts of present-day Chad.

Tabkin Kwotto had made the jihad possible. Alkalawa had completed it.