Thread by @YorubaHistory

The Yoruba Mahdi.
By
A. R. I. Doi.

Journal of Religion in Africa Vol 4. Fasc. 2. 1971-1972

Mahdism in Islam is the expectation of a saviour, the word Mahdi designating the "guided one". According to this belief, well known in Islamic history, Mahdi will appear at the end of time & fill the earth with equity & justice after it has been filled with tyranny & oppression.

The Mahdi is described as the descendant of the Prophet who will appear at the end of time. Though the authority of such teaching has been impugned by numerous Muslim scholars, Islamic history shows many instances of claimants to the stool of the Mahdi.

Muhammad Jumat Adesina

1896-1959

was born in Ijebu-Ode of Muslim parentage. He had primary education & good knowledge of Arabic.
He earned a living as an Arabic bookseller & tutor, astrologer & fortune teller. He was also one of the founders of Muslim schools in Ijebu-Ode.

In 1918 barely 22 years old, he left home for Kano where he became the imam of Yoruba Muslims. He was there until 1922 when he came back to settle in Ijebu-Ode.

In 1926, at the age of 30, he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, traveling by sea through Accra, Las Palmas, Plymouth, Marseilles, Alexandria, Port Said, Jerusalem, Galilee, Jedda and on to Mecca and Medina. No doubt he was one of the successful men of Ijebu-Ode.

He had high, but eventually unmet hopes of one day becoming chief Imam of the town. As an astrologer he believed in dreams & visions, the possibility of grasping the signs of the stars & planets & reading their meanings. He also engaged in complex numerological interpretations.

In 1936, he said a voice came to him to write a letter, Wathiqat to the Muslim towns in Nigeria. Only Ilorin and Zaria replied. Zaria sent a Sherif Bal-Ahmad to verify the claims. He claimed several other fantastic dreams and bizarre visions.

These culminated in the claim of the appearance of the spirit of truth, Rah al-Haq to him in 1941. He booked & on 20th Dec he got an audience with the Awujale Gbelegbuwa II and his chiefs, where he declared himself the Mahdi, the savior foretold in both the Quran and the Bible.

Having briefed the Oba, he started to draw a group of people around him; 56 men including 7 Alhajis and 41 Alfas. A women’s wing was later formed with 17 women as nucleus. That was the formal birth of what he called the Ijebu Islamic Reformative Society.

On Fridays missioners were sent out to neighboring towns and villages to preach that the Mahdi, the promised messiah had come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Within a short period they had covered a substantial part of Ijebuland.

His main teachings were principally against idolatrous practices. But also included that Muslims must also believe in the Bible as the word of God, although he did not believe in Jesus as the son of God. He also preached a number of other beliefs from Christianity and Judaism.

Ijebu Muslim leaders denounced him & his followers as heretics & banned them from the mosque. He disagreed & proclaimed that nothing could prevent them from the mosque, which was a common heritage of their fathers. The police had to intervene & the mosque closed for some time.

He eventually put up his own mosque constructed in the pattern of Union Jack cross with 8 corners, as he believed the British govt was guided by the Holy Ghost. He called it after the sanctuary in Mecca. He seemed to’ve visualized Ijebu-Ode replacing Mecca as place of pilgrimage

He continued to write letters to Islamic leaders including the Sultan of Sokoto Saddiq Abubakar III & Khalifa al-Masih Hussein Muhammed Agha in Port Sudan. The general reaction of the public to the movement was unenthusiastic. He was ridiculed by the press and public opinion.

On Friday 4th May, 1945, he and about 200 followers, men and women, proceeded to Mecca. This time by lorry to Ibadan, then by train to Kano, then caravan to Fort-Lammy and Khartoum.
His followers sang his praises loudly at each stop along the way to Khartoum.

Majority of his follower stayed on in Khartoum while he and a few leaders proceeded ahead to Mecca.
On arrival in Mecca, the King of Arabia, who had earlier received a letter from him, asserting his Mahdi claims, sent soldiers to arrest him.

He was dragged before a sharia court and convicted, although he was still allowed to complete his Hajj rites under police escort.

He was eventually set free with the intervention of the Awujale, through the Nigerian government.

He returned to Khartoum where he found most of his followers had died. This he attributed to their sins while he was away.

He eventually got back home to Ijebu-Ode four years later, in 1949 with a few remaining survivors, to face great difficulty from the families of those who died in Khartoum. With insufficient funds, they fell to malnutrition, ill health, mental derangement and death.

He was dragged before the Awujale where he was accused of contravening the laws and traditions of the land. In his defense, he began to narrate the persecutions of earlier prophets and spoke as if he was one of them, about to face a similar tragic end. He was later discharged.

The experience didn’t deter him. He continued with his teaching and beliefs.

He died on Tuesday 17th February 1959. His followers still existed well into the ‘70s in Ijebu area, although it’s not now known how active the movement is, after the death of all the original leaders.

jstor.org/stable/1594738…