Nigeria

Africa's most populous state; the Muslim north was the Sokoto heartland.

☾ The Coming of Islam

Kanem-Bornu, the Hausa states and Sokoto

Islam reached the Lake Chad region and the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu by about the 11th century and spread among the Hausa cities; the jihad of Usman ɗan Fodio (from 1804) founded the Sokoto Caliphate, which consolidated Islam across the north.

☾ Religious Composition

A country divided broadly between Islam and Christianity

Nigeria — home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations — is roughly divided between a Muslim north (predominantly Sunni-Mālikī, with strong Sufi orders and growing reformist currents) and a largely Christian south, with traditional religions also present.

Demographic shares are approximate and contested; no recent census has recorded religion.

▤ Scholars & Institutions

Sokoto and the scholarship of the jihad state

The Sokoto Caliphate produced a substantial body of Arabic and Hausa/Fulfulde scholarship in law, governance and reform, and Sokoto remains a spiritual reference point for many northern Nigerian Muslims.

At a glance