The Hour of the Christians
Sura An-Naas By Shaykh Muhammad Shareef (Hatumere' Designs)
On March 15, 1903 the armies of the Sokoto Caliphate were defeated at the hands of the British Imperialists. The Caliph (or ruler) of the Sokoto Caliphate at that time was Muhammad Attahiru, the twelfth ruler after Shehu Uthman Dan Fuduye’. After the ‘defeat’, Attahiru led a mass exodus (hijra) of his loyal supporters and officials on the famous ‘hijra to the east’, which had been foretold a century earlier by the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, Shehu Uthman Dan Fuduye’. This large movement of Muslims from Hausaland, Segu, Massina and Adamawa journeyed east until they arrived at a military garrison called Burmi on the far-eastern border of the Empire. There, Attahiru and his jama`at (community), alon with a host of other confederated communities, put up a valiant fight against the British before he and many of his supporters were martyred on July 27, 1903. Prior to his slaying, he appointed Muhammad Bello Mai Wurno as Caliph to lead the mass hijra to the banks of the Blue Nile as foretold by their grandfather, Uthman Dan Fuduye’.
