The campaign season was the Dry Season. Few campaigns were conducted during the Rainy Season. The wet weather often made supplying and transporting an army difficult at best. The main problem during the Dry Season was obtaining food and water.

Many campaigns were small in nature, since the Sokoto commanders relied on personal followers rather than levying local troops. A large expedition in 1830 was around 60,000 strong. A more common force was the combined Kanembu-Shuwa force of 15,000 men. Only if Sokoto was invaded or a jihad proclaimed were mass levies employed. This reliance on close followers resulted in many campaigns during being nothing more than large raids. Even Shaikh and Bello could often not raise very large forces. This placed a lot of power in the hands of local emirs and prevented Sokoto from being able to field an army capable of crushing its pagan neighbors.

Most campaigns consisted of raids with limited objectives or attempts to capture a specific town. The various Sokoto leaders would request permission from the Sokoto’s ruler before launching a campaign. The Sokoto’s main adversaries were pagan towns and its local grazing lands, Moslem dissidents and outlaws.

The Sokoto under Bello built a series of ribats, walled towns, along the border. Their purpose was to close the border to raiders and provide early warning to the towns. Sometimes a ribat would be built at an existing town or a new settlement would be built with the ribat at its center.

In the few set piece battles the pride of an army was measured in armored cavalry and they often kept in a center reserve position. Located in the Center were also men of the ruler’s clan who would be armored and fought on foot, if horses were unavailable, with spears. As more firearms became available, it would be these loyal followers that would receive guns first. A vast number of men deployed to the wings of the center supplied with armory bows. Finally some levy troops were deployed on the flanks and fought with simple javelins and swords.

Armies used some foot scouts but made little use of mounted scouts as the horse were too highly prized. The lack of scouts made the use of Taureg allies invaluable. Both armies would attempt to extend their battle lines and outflank the enemy. Once an enemy was outflanked, they would be forced into new positions in a packed center. The dense formation would be an easy target for the poorly trained archers.

A primary need of a campaigning force was to obtain food and water. In this particularly tough region, food was scarce and water limited except along a river. In the dry season that was the main campaigning time, many lakes and streams dried up due to the heat. The idea that an army would have to limit its activity due to a shortage of gunpowder and flints limited the use of firearms

Hausaland and the Growth of the Sokoto Caliphate

Introduction
Equipment, Training and Weapons
Tactics and Campaigns
Pre-Jihad Chronology of Hausaland
The Sokoto-Gobirawa War 1804-07
The Sokoto Early Migration Trek
The Sokoto Empire Consolidation Era 1817-1859
Key Personalities of Sokoto and Hausaland
Key Hausa Towns