Although there was a considerable coterie of learned men who were contemporaries of Sh. ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad Fodiye and his son and successor Muḥammad Bello, and who supported the jihād, their literary activities were to a great extent overshadowed by the vast scholarly production of the jihād leaders. There are few sources on these early nineteenth-century writers, and it is likely that they wrote more than the rather meagre list of works presented here would suggest.

The leading scholars of the early period were all close associates of the Sh. ʿUthmān, and some were re…