Shehu Usman dan Fodio, a Fulani Islamic scholar of the Qadiriyya order born in Gobir in 1754, launched the jihad on 21 February 1804 after his break with the Sarkin Gobir Yunfa. The campaign overran the Hausa kingdoms of Gobir, Kano, Katsina, Daura and Zazzau within five years, and by 1809 the Sokoto Caliphate — capital at Sokoto under dan Fodio's son Muhammed Bello — administered an area larger than modern Germany.
The Caliphate's administrative innovations (the emirate system, a literate Sharia-based judiciary, large-scale Arabic-language record-keeping, and a standing cavalry) were the foundation Lord Lugard inherited when he conquered the North between 1900 and 1903. Indirect rule preserved the emirates and the Sultanate intact; the Caliphate's institutions still structure traditional authority across Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno (in part), Adamawa, Kaduna, Niger and Kwara to this day.