Toronkawa — The Tribes of the Fulani · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Plate I · SOKOTO · The Tribes of the Fulani

The Toronkawa are the scholar clan of the Nigerian Fulɓe — the lineage of Usman ɗan Fodio, whose community at Degel taught, wrote, and finally rose in the jihad of 1804 that built the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest state in nineteenth-century West Africa. Their inheritance was never land first: it was the pen.

The plate renders that inheritance as a scholars' register — rows of allo, the wooden Qur'anic writing tablet, one picked out in gold for the Shehu. Caption logged survey-style; the lyre-horn zebu closes the plate as the collection brand.

Survey-plate artwork on heavyweight cotton. Front: the Toronkawa plate. Back: PL. 0, the Fulɓe mark — the zebu ringed by sixteen clans.