SULTAN BELLO 391 the courage of their armies by treating their enemies as infidels, but, as a matter of fact, there were many-Mohammedans amongst their opponents, for Islam had long been the religion of the upper classes of all the principal towns of Haussaland. In the central provinces of Katsena, Kano, and Zaria, the government and the whole organisation of society was Mohammedan, a fact admitted by the Fulani when they adopted, as they subsequently did, the existing Haussa, or, as the conquerors preferred to call them, ** Habe," systems of law, justice, and taxation. All these were based upon the Koran. In Zaria the reigning dynasty was actually Fulani ; in Katsena and Kano the reigning sovereigns were of Haussa dynasties, but for many generations they had been Mohammedan. Kebbi, one of the most stubborn opponents of Fulani domination, was itself, as we have seen, at one time partly populated by Fulani. There existed, therefore, in all these provinces large bodies of Mohammedans, who were driven out before the conquerors, and in many cases we hear of Mohammedan Haussas obliged to take refuge, like the pagan population, in the hills. This is to say, that everywhere there existed large sections of the cultivated upper classes profoundly antagonistic to Fulani rule. Shortly after 1808 the defeats of the Fulani by Mohammed el Kanemi in Bornu began to inspire new courage into the disaffected, and about the year 18 16, the very year of the accession of Mohammed Bello, a confederation was formed of Haussa States determined to fight for their independence with the Fulani.

According to a Mohammedan account written by a certain Hadj Said, and translated as a fragment of the history of Sokoto by M. Houdas, Sultan Bello had hardly received the oath of allegiance when all the provinces neighbouring upon Sokoto abjured Islam and rose in revolt against the Mohammedan rulers, who were apparently supported, perhaps nominated, by Bello. The native chiefs of Gober, Zanfara, and Nupe, were the first to form