The Combat and Military Systems of Africa and its Diaspora

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

I am very interested in African Martial arts and weaponry as I write comics with african leanings. I want my heroes to have their own styles and armerment.

In this thread, there are illustrations which may prove useful to you.

 

[Neuromancer]

In this thread, there are illustrations which may prove useful to you.

Thank you I will read through. And thank.you for making the thread.

 

[intruder]

Yeah, isn't Iran still bootlegging spare parts for those F-14s the Shah got before the Revolution?

Iran is holding onto the F14s how they can but moving forward they better start shopping .
Problem is anyone they try to shop from Will get some flack from Israel.
The only countries who don't give a fukk what Israel thinks are Russia , China and maybe Sweden.

They can forget about buying from the Americans, the French, or the British because those countries have a soft spot for Israel and if israel says don't sell to Iran they won't.

SA has had some Gripens for a while (though there was a corruption investigation out of it). That is a sweet looking plane. Not sure it has ever seen combat though.

It'sa newer version of the Viggen which has seen action. Besides, it's a highly regarded platform by all experts. The F16 had never seen action but was the world's most successful fighter in terms of sales before the gulf war even happened.

I don't trust the French in Africa. Maybe I trust them slightly more than US/UK but that's not saying much. I have trouble believing a deal with Africa from the French comes with no strings attached. They get pretty jealous if you turn your back on them. See Niger and Cote d'Ivoire.

You may be right. But buying from the British and Americans would put them in the same bind IMO

China has some pretty interesting fighters it has developed. The J-11 is kind of their Su-27 and the J-10 is their MiG-29. They almost never export anything besides small arms though. Even North Korea doesn't have any modern Chinese fighters. Maybe that will change but outside of small arms their military exports are more tentative than you might think.

some of China's fighters are quite impressive.

And trust me China is all about business so they are down to sell to anyone who wants to buy it. I think the main reason they don't sell to North Koreans is because that would put them in a bad place with their trade agreement with the US which is their biggest customer in terms of other products.

They don't want to fukk up their money just because Kim Un wants to be a badass

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

THE COLLAPSE OF THE OYO (YORUBA) EMPIRE

The Beginning of the End: The Strengthening of Oyo’s Neighbors and Afonja’s Insubordination (c.1783–c.1817)
During the eighteenth century Oyo emerged as one of the strongest polities in West Africa (see Map 1.1). Its rulers, known as aláàfins, were continuously successful in waging war against most of their neighbors, in some cases by conquest and in others by imposing and extracting tribute. In that respect Oyo became a quintessential West African pre-colonial predatory state.2 Its development was based on cyclical predatory wars that ensured the submission of its enemies and the procurement of slaves to supply its domestic market and the growing needs of the transatlantic and transaharan trades. These wars not only provided slaves and booty, but also contributed to the internal political and social stability of the kingdom. Nevertheless, powerful as they usually were, starting in 1754 Oyo’s aláàfins went through a period in which their authority was little more than nominal, after the commander-in-chief of the army and leader of the Oyo Mesi, Basorun Gaha, took over the kingdom, going as far as disposing of three aláàfins and waging war whenever he saw fit.3

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

In 1770 a new Aláàfin, Abiodun, came to power and slowly but surely started to claim the lost alafinate authority back. Eventually, in 1774 an older and much debilitated Gaha was forced to deal with and crush an open insurrection in Ilorin led by the local chief Pasin, and not long after, Abiodun, supported by a number (p. 24 ) of unhappy chiefs organized a coup that ended with his de facto rule.4 The following years saw the Aláàfin reclaim his supremacy and Oyo attain its greatest territorial extent,5 but as various scholars have pointed out, the long-term damage to the mighty kingdom had been already done.6 For example, J. A. Atanda claimed that underlying constitutional weaknesses within Oyo reduced the aláàfins “to impotence in practice,” while none of the other high-ranking officers was at least in theory strong enough to assert power over the entire kingdom.7 Robert S. Smith was even more specific by pinpointing the major internal problems that plagued the kingdom in the post-Gaha period. Among them were a decrease in the effectiveness of the army, the overdependence of Oyo upon the slave trade, the increase in the foreign and unfree population that helped lead to the fall of Ilorin to the jihadists in c.1823–c.1824, and, finally, a decline of impetus and morale at the center of government.8

(p. 25 ) Although domestically peace had been reestablished, Oyo’s neighbors had begun to assess their odds of achieving independence. In the 1780s the sphere of influence of the kingdom expanded as never before, but also saw the first signs of external challenge to its traditional political and military supremacy. Although Aláàfin Abiodun still managed to reaffirm his control over Dahomey, as it is clear from the campaigns ordered by him and carried out by the Dahomean army in 1784 against Badagry and 1786 against Weme, others decided that the time had come to confront Oyo. The first indication of external weakening was the defeat suffered by an Oyo force at Kaiama in Borgu in 1783.9 According to the report given by Lionel Abson, Governor of the English fort at Whydah, the Oyo army had received “a total overthrow from a country by name Barrabas (Bariba/Borgu) having lost in the battle 11 umbrellas and the generals under them.”10 Not much is known about this apparently disastrous campaign, and although Oyo recovered by establishing control over Mahi and the southern Egbado, things got much worse after the death of Abiodun in c.1789.

Barely two years later, around 1791, both external and internal problems began to accumulate. First, another hefty Oyo force was heavily defeated by a Nupe army. As a result, according to Archibald Dalzel, Oyo was “under the necessity of submitting to the victor’s own terms, having lost thirteen umbrellas in the action.”11 Internally, Abiodun’s successor, Awole, was soon at odds with both the Basorun Asamu, and more importantly, with the newly appointed Are-Ona-Kakanfo Afonja, who was soon to play a pivotal role in the events that led to the collapse of the kingdom. Afonja, alongside the Bale of Gbogun, Opele, defied the authority of the new Aláàfin, refused to pay him tribute, and conspired to bring him down. By the mid-1790s both Afonja and Opele had strengthened their own spheres of influence. When the Aláàfin finally decided to rid himself of Afonja, a mutiny jointly organized by Basorun Asamu, Opele, and Afonja culminated in what Robin Law has termed a coup d’état that forced the Aláàfin to take his own life.12 According to Johnson, these events were followed by Opele’s conquest of Dofian and Igbo-Owu, and by a failed attempt to take Igboho, where he was killed by an arrow.13 In the meantime, Afonja asserted his authority in the north by limiting the power of the new aláàfins and by expanding his sphere of influence towards Igbomina.14

What until then had been a struggle for power within a unified state soon led to the secession of one of its provinces, for in around 1796 the Egba rebelled against Oyo during the regency of Basorun Asamu, and attained their independence, showing the way to other Oyo provinces and endangering the “important trade route to (p. 26 )the coast.”15 This combination of defeats at Borgu and Nupe, the insubordination of important provinces like Ilorin, Egba, and in due course Ekiti, and the now diminished authority of the aláàfins led to a period of instability characterized by the empowerment of Afonja in the north, by an increase of internal conflict, and by changes in the slave trade patterns observed until that time. By c.1812 the south of the kingdom saw the first skirmishes of the Owu wars, while north of Oyo an aggressive new state, the Sokoto Caliphate, began threatening the very existence of Oyo from the mid-1810s.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

The relationship between Oyo and its northern neighbors had been traditionally complicated, and often determined by the size and strength of their armies. Nupe had always been a thorn in Oyo’s side, and there is some evidence that points to a possible Nupe ascendancy over Oyo, at least from the second part of the eighteenth century. Relationships with Borgu were not better. Borgu and Oyo had been habitual rivals, and after Oyo’s defeat at Kaiama in 1783, armed parties from Borgu increased their forays into Oyo territory. These attacks and acts of vandalism eventually became a serious problem to the point that by the time Hugh Clapperton visited the area they were considered to be one of the main dangers affecting Oyo’s roads.16 On the other hand, the relationship between Oyo and the various Hausa-speaking states, at least until the beginnings of the nineteenth century, had been mostly based on mutual trade benefits.17 The slaves procured from the constant and consuming wars that plagued the Hausa-speaking states throughout the eighteenth century were, according to Lovejoy, “common in Oyo, both for domestic use and for employment in the military.”18

In the late eighteenth century these Hausa-speaking states would experience a renaissance of Islamic militant discourses and practices associated with Mahdist beliefs and with the perceived need to reform, by arms if necessary, the corrupt form of Islam instituted by the rulers of each of these states.19 Already in the 1770s an Islamic preacher and scholar, Jibrilu Dan Umaru, called for a jihād to reform this deviating Islamic rule. As Smaldone has rightly argued, although his call “went unheeded,” three decades later one of his students’ new calls would revolutionize the structure and balance of power in the entire Central Sudan.20

By the mid-1790s Uthman Dan Fodio had become a well-known scholar and the leader of the Qādiriyya Order across the Hausa-speaking territories.21 As a (p. 27 )result of his Mahdist beliefs, his views of the socio-political status of these states, along with a number of mystic visions, Dan Fodio found himself more and more at odds with the rulers of Gobir, the kingdom where he had been born and where he had lived most of his life. These tensions increased during the government of Nafata (c.1795–c.1802) and reached a point of no return after the ascension of Yunfa in 1802. The new Sarki saw the Muslim reformists as a threat to the stability of Gobir and did everything in his power to undermine and restrain them. On his part, Dan Fodio considered all Hausa rulers as “unbelievers and nothing else,”22 and went as far as to record a long list of ways in which they had, until then, oppressed and taken advantage of their people.23 Yunfa’s intolerance combined with Dan Fodio’s confrontational position led to the outbreak of hostilities between the two sides in 1804.24 A military campaign that initially seemed destined to be another minor episode in the history of Central Sudanic warfare, soon turned into a full-scale jihād that would affect in one way or another every state in the area. Within four years the Hausa-speaking states had been unified and brought under Fulani rule, and virtually every polity in the region was effectively under threat from the jihadist forces.25

The socio-political motives behind the Fulani-led jihād have been repeatedly discussed over the years. In addition to the perceived need for an Islamic reform, endemic warfare associated with social injustice and the enslavement of people—frequently Muslims—seemed to have also been fundamental reasons behind the call for the jihād of 1804.26 The aforementioned factor apparently carried considerable weight in the minds of those who led the movement. In the decades that preceded the jihād, Hausa rulers and traders had profited from the enslavement of fellow Muslims on a continual basis. The slave trade towards the Bights, and also towards the Sahara, was a thriving business. Whilst discussing this issue Lovejoy noted that “Uthman dan Fodio complained about the enslavement of Muslims by the Hausa states,” although he also pointed out that “the consolidation of the Sokoto Caliphate only increased the level of enslavement, including large numbers of Muslims.”27 Although the jihād appeared to have fallen short of limiting the enslavement of fellow Muslims, it did not fail to unify and (p. 28 ) reform the formerly independent Hausa states into one single state: the Sokoto Caliphate.28

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

From 1804 onwards the jihadist forces swelled. Taking advantage of the long- standing rifts existing between the rulers of the various Hausa states, Dan Fodio and his commanders defeated each of them, eventually ushering in a new age of Islamic orthodox rule throughout the Hausa-speaking territories. The main leaders of the jihādseem to have been well versed in the art of war. In particular Dan Fodio’s brother Abdullahi and son Muhammad Bello proved to be brilliant generals who inflicted defeat after defeat on their enemies.29

By September 1808, after three previous failed attempts, the jihadist forces finally took Alkalawa, the capital of Gobir.30 As a direct result of the fall of Alkalawa, a “unified Islamic feudality,” the Sokoto Caliphate was established in 1809, ushering in what is commonly considered as the second phase of the jihād.31 Now, the jihadists moved towards the neighboring kingdoms of Kano and Zaria, and continued east as far as Borno, where an army led by Muhammad Al-Amin Al-Kanemi eventually stopped them. As a result of this advance the flag bearers of the Shehu founded new emirates. Hadejia, Katagum, Bauchi, and Gombe were all well established by 1811. The following year the Caliphate was divided into a western section with its capital in Gwandu under Abdullahi’s command, and an eastern section based in Sokoto under Bello’s authority.32

The strengthening of the Caliphate’s grip and authority throughout Hausaland allowed the jihadist forces to organize themselves and to support each other in the impending military campaigns. What at the beginning had been barely an Islamic guerrilla-like force resisting the armies sent from Gobir, by 1812 had become a respectable military force formed by a number of individual armies often linked to the new emirates who waged what Lovejoy has called “a continuous military campaign” with “enslavement as a basic aim.”33 Once the Hausa-speaking territories were finally secured the Islamic forces set their sights on their southern neighbors, Borgu, Nupe, and Oyo.

Over the following years the people of Borgu were attacked on numerous occasions by the jihadists. In spite of these unremitting attacks they were successful in repelling them to the point that Uthman Dan Fodio himself called all true Muslims to emigrate from those lands after giving up on them. According to Nehemiah Levtzion, the resistance presented against the jihād by many states, including Borgu, may have been the result of a conceptual opposition between the ruling (p. 29 ) warrior elites, unwilling to relinquish or share the power they had traditionally held, with these new Islamic leaders.34 Whilst Borgu remained mostly independent and for Dan Fodio and his followers considered to be within the realm of Dar-el-harb (the house of war), from the late 1810s Nupe was consumed by a civil war of which the jihadists took full advantage almost immediately. Upon the death of Mu’azu, the Etsu of Nupe, a succession conflict ensued between the two claimants to the throne, Majiya and Jimada. In order to secure power Majiya invited the jihadists, represented by Mallam Dendo, to back his claim, and eventually defeated and killed Jimada in c.1820. By the early 1830s and after a string of changes of alliances and military campaigns that included Majiya’s unsuccessful attack against Ilorin, his escape, and his ultimate reinstatement to the throne as a puppet of Mallam Dendo, Nupe had, in practical terms, become another emirate of Sokoto.35

Further south, a not-so-dissimilar historical development took place well into Oyo’s territory, specifically in and around Ilorin. There, Afonja, driven by his desire of strengthening his hold on northern Oyo, invited another Fulani Mallam called Alimi to be by his side, presumably as an advisor and spiritual leader. From the 1790s when he had played a pivotal role in the fall of Aláàfin Awole, Afonja had been in open insubordination against the rulers of Oyo. However, according to Falola and Heaton his rebellion had remained stagnant during all those years since “Oyo was not able to defeat him” and “neither was Afonja able to inflict any serious defeats on Oyo.”36

This lack of progress apparently led Afonja to seek help, not only from military leaders such as the Onikoyi of Ikoyi, but also from defecting slaves and from Islamic spiritual leaders. The first of these to come and settle around Ilorin seems to have been Solagberu, a Yoruba-speaking Muslim from Kuwo who became an important ally of Afonja. Historical evidence suggests that throughout the 1810s ever increasing numbers of northern slaves, probably mostly Hausa speakers, began to run away from their Oyo masters and gather around Afonja and probably also around Solagberu, participating as soldiers in the military excursions sent from Ilorin against its neighbors, and in time launching their own raids into Oyo territory.37

When Mallam Alimi settled in Ilorin around 1817 or 1818 Afonja’s independence from Oyo was a fact. Alimi, a Fulani cleric who had been preaching and selling charms throughout northern Oyo since around 1813, and who was well acquainted with Dan Fodio’s jihād, soon became a key friend and advisor to Afonja, and an influential leader among the runaway Hausa-speaking slaves who were settling in and around Ilorin.38

Although Afonja never converted to Islam, for a few years he was successful in using these runaway slaves in his expeditions against the Igbolos, the Igbominas, (p. 30 )the Ekitis, and the Oyos.39 When Clapperton visited Oyo’s capital in the mid-1820s he noticed how afraid the Oyo were of these runaway slaves. He was told that the slaves had been in rebellion for two years and that they had taken control of “a large town” two days’ journey from Oyo-Ile called “Lori” [Ilorin].40 In spite of achieving a number of victories and of solidifying his ascendancy over Oyo, Afonja eventually paid a high price for relying too much on these Muslim troops. In the early 1820s he seemed to have fallen out with both Alimi and Solagberu, and was eventually a victim of what seems to have been in fact a “coup organized to establish Fulani control over Ilorin.”41 The loyalties of these runaway slaves now lay with Alimi and his sons, and when Afonja attempted to disband them they rose and surrounded and killed him before he could receive reinforcements from Ikoyi.42 After his death in c.1823 Ilorin fell into Fulani hands for good. Since Alimi himself seems to have died soon before Afonja, probably also in 1823, and Solagberu was killed not long after, power fell to Alimi’s son Abdusalami.43 Upon Afonja’s and Alimi’s deaths, Ilorin became an emirate under Gwandu and Abdusalami its first emir, ruling between c.1823 and c.1834.

For the Oyo the news of the assassination of Afonja was as devastating as news can be. For all they had suffered while Afonja was alive, he was still one of them, an Oyo renegade, but still an Oyo. The continual incursions of Afonja’s Muslim war-boys into Oyo territory, cruel and destructive as they were, could not compare to the new menace that a jihadist outpost well inside Oyo territory now posed to them. More importantly, as Law has argued, Afonja’s death closed the period of internal strife between Oyo chiefs, giving way to a new period in which Ilorin, now an emirate under Gwandu, “represented an alien power whose object was the complete destruction of the Oyo kingdom.”44

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

MODERN DAY YORUBA ON A HORSE

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

To have a new Gwandu emirate southeast of their capital Oyo-Ile was both frightening and unacceptable. This circumstance led the Aláàfin and his new Are-Ona-Kakanfo, Toyeje of Ogbomoso, to act in order to prevent any further gains into Oyo territory by the invaders. According to Robin Law, who has discussed the chronology of the period, a number of military campaigns ensued roughly between 1824 and 1830.45 These campaigns, however, were doomed as far as Oyo was concerned even before they began. By this time Oyo was already experiencing a “severe commercial depression” that was a result of its lack of success in supplying the Europeans with enough slaves.46

(p. 31 ) The first of these campaigns occurred in c.1824, when the Oyo regular army fought an intense battle against the troops from Ilorin at Ogele. The Oyo army was eventually defeated and pursued by the jihadists. According to Johnson, the invaders then followed up their victory with the “destruction of many towns in the Ibolo province,”47 causing much damage and even more distress among the Oyo. Sometime in 1824 or 1825, the Oyo gathered again, this time counting on the support of Majiya of Nupe, who was interested in destroying Ilorin where Mallam Dendo was hiding at the time, and attacked Ilorin for a second time. The combined Oyo and Nupe armies struggled from the onset to organize themselves in the wake of all the destruction left behind by the previous conflict. This campaign came to be known as the Mugba Mugba war (locust fruit war), due to the extraordinary situation in which the soldiers found themselves, being forced to live on the locust fruit in order to survive what by all accounts amounted almost to a famine. According to Johnson, once more the Oyo were unable to cope with the competent Fulani regular cavalry, and were heavily defeated for a second time.48

The Ogele and Mugba Mugba wars led to a breakdown of central authority in Oyo of unprecedented magnitude that coupled with the wars in the south limited considerably the power of Aláàfin Majotu. Not long after the Mugba Mugba war had ended, sometime between 1825 and 1830, two of the Aláàfin’s most senior officers, Adegun, the Onikoyi of Ikoyi, and Toyeje, the new Are-Ona-Kakanfo, went to war against each other. Some petty quarrel between them led to an open armed conflict in which Toyeje, supported by Solagberu and an army from Ilorin, laid siege to Ikoyi, almost taking it before the tide turned against him when the Ilorin army was recalled by Abdusalami.49 In what amounted to a realignment of the invading forces, almost immediately after these troops were sent again to Ikoyi, but this time in support of the Onikoyi, who had struck a deal with Abdusalami declaring his allegiance to the emirate.50 The armies of Ikoyi and Ilorin then proceeded to inflict another heavy defeat upon the armies of Oyo at Pamo.

After this last routing the Oyo army was once again in retreat and disarray, and many of its remnants moved south in small guerrilla-like groups that contributed to the perpetuation of slave raids and wars that were already under way in places like Owu and Egba. Abdusalami’s power in the northern territories of Oyo was almost total. After the Onikoyi declared his loyalty to Ilorin, the Emir’s armies began to enter and raid the Oyo lands with an increased frequency, mostly in search of slaves to supply the transaharan and transatlantic slave trade markets.51 Oyo was effectively torn into pieces and the authority of the Aláàfin shattered. At some point there were three claimants to the title of Are-Ona-Kakanfo, Edun of Gbogun, Ojo (p. 32 ) Amepo of Akese, and Oluyedun, a son of Afonja who was at the time in Ibadan. As Law has pointed out, the dissolution of the Empire “could hardly be better illustrated than by this simultaneous existence of three claimants to its senior military title, none of whom had been appointed by the Aláàfin.”52

These military campaigns had a profound effect on the ways in which the slave trade was conducted in the region and also on who was enslaved and exported, and where from and to. In the time of Afonja, small gangs of runaway slaves based in Ilorin were among those who conducted slave raids into Oyo territory. The attack on Ajayi’s village, with which this chapter begins, is only one among the many that took place then. After Afonja’s death, to a considerable extent Ilorin “took over Oyo’s role as slave supplier, both by capture and trade.”53 Incursions into Oyo were now more frequent and devastating than before, since the many disputes existing among the Oyo chiefs did not allow for an organized resistance against the Muslim invaders. Raids into Nupe and Borgu were also common at least from the time of Sokoto’s consolidation as a Sudanese state in the mid-1810s.54

While Nupe and Ilorin fell to the Islamic forces in the 1820s, Oyo and the Yoruba-speaking states to the south had other problems to contend with. A war between Owu on one side and Ife and Ijebu on the other had broken out sometime midway through the 1810s and had developed into a full-fledged conflict by the mid-1820s. Additionally, after the ascension of King Ghezo to the Dahomean throne in 1818, the southwestern border of the Oyo Empire came under sustained attacks from its former vassals, who being discontented with shaking off Oyo’s domination, also invaded and occupied several regions that had formerly belonged to Dahomey.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Hausa-Fulani on horse

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

The Current Aare Ona Kakanfo - Chief Warlord of Yorubaland

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

NUPE CAVALRYMAN

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

The Secrets of Kenya's invasion of Somalia
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