The Fula (or Fulani) jihads (sometimes the Fulani revolution) are a series of jihadist wars that occur across West Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led largely by the Muslim Fula people.
The jihads and the jihad states come to an end with European colonization.
The first uprising inspired by Islam takes place in Futa Jalon in 1725, when Fula pastoralists, assisted by Muslim traders, rise against the indigenous chiefdoms still dominated by traditional religion.
By 1750, the Fula have established an imamate and placed the region under sharia law.
Their success inspires the Fula and Toucouleurs on the banks of the lower Senegal to establish their own imamate, Futa Toro, through a series of wars between 1769 and 1776.
In the early nineteenth century, the jihad movement spreads eastward to the Hausa states.
The result of a series of jihads begun in 1804 by the revolutionary Usman dan Fodio is the Sokoto Caliphate, the largest state in West Africa up to this time.
An aggressively expansionist polity, it severely weakens the old Bornu Kingdom.
Although religion is a motivator for the jihads, it may not have been the principal motivator over time; the Fula intend to produce the captives needed to sell as slaves to gain valuable imports from the coast.
