Officer Corps An emir rarely took personal command of his army in the field. The functions of military leadership were usually performed by the emir's officer corps, with his senior general directing field operations. They were functionally differentiated from the civil administration. A major emirate commonly had at least twenty military officials, each of whom rated a staff of several junior officers. The titles of these officers varied among the emirates. The army was organized in the traditional Muslim system of advance guard, main body, right and left wings, and rear guard. Each of these divisions was under the command of one of the emir's officers, and was composed of feudal contingents of the emirate. The individual hakimai maintained their own contingents and a corps of officers. The hakimai had general military functions, but they did not actually command their troop levies in battle. They acted as liaisons between their own officers and the emir's officers. City Fortifications The walled cities of the Sokoto Caliphate were formidable to besiegers without artillery. The perimeter of the walls was from two to three miles for a capitol in the smaller emirates, to ten miles for those of the larger emirates. About half the enclosed area was uninhabited, leaving land available for cultivation to supply food during a siege. The walls were twenty to thirty feet high and 20 or 30 feet thick. They were constructed of sun-baked mud bricks, laid in a wedge- shaped pattern and plastered with mud cement. Along the top of the walls they built ramparts, loopholes, and crenelations. Since the heavy seasonal rains weathered the mud walls, repair was a perennial concern; and each Autumn, after the rains had ceased and the crops harvested, levies of able-bodied males clients and slaves turned out to perform this considerable task. Surrounding the walls were one or more ditches, whose depth added to the height of the walls. They were usually filled with dense thorn thickets to impede the advance of an assault. The gates in the walls were made of thick hardwood, covered with tanned animal hide, and sometimes reinforced with sheets of iron or other metal. Despite their strength, the gates were the most vulnerable points in the defenses, and consequently the principle objectives of attackers. Therefore, additional measures were taken to protect them. Sometimes the gates were placed at a reentrant angle of the walls, to expose their approaches to enfilade fire. The roads leading to the towns narrowed as they neared the gates, and were lined by wide low walls. These and the narrow bridges across the moats served to channel attackers into a concentrations of defensive fire. Furthermore, the gates were set deeply into the walls, forming dark recesses to confuse attacking forces that penetrated the outer defenses, and to conceal defenders stationed there. Armies of the Sokoto Caliphate The Yucatan Indian Uprising 1847-1855 Introduction and Army Organization Cavalry Infantry and Artillery Officers and Fortifications The Warfare State The British Invasions 1897-1903 Wargaming Back to Table of Contents -- Savage and Soldier Vol. XXIII No. 3 Back to Savage and Soldier List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by Milton Soong. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com