Qualla: Adamawa Wars

Adamawa Wars: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Dominik, Public domain. In January 1903, a man named Yerima Mustapha arranged a meeting with Graf Fugger, the German resident administrator of Maroua, and killed him with a poisoned dart. Mustapha was an agent of Emir Zubeiru bi Adama, who was living in exile after being driven from his own capital by German colonial forces. The assassination was one act in a decade-long series of conflicts known as the Adamawa Wars -- a collision between German imperial ambition and the Islamic emirates that had governed northern Cameroon for nearly a century.

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Hans Dominik | Public domain

Adamawa Wars: An Empire in the Path of an Empire

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rupert M East, Public domain. The Adamawa Emirate was the largest of the semi-autonomous states within the Sokoto Caliphate, one of the last remaining caliphates in the world alongside the Ottoman Empire. Its Fulani rulers governed a vast territory that overlapped with German colonial claims in what was then ...

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Rupert M East | Public domain

Adamawa Wars: The March Inland

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Dominik, Public domain. The first major push began in January 1899, when Captain Oltwig von Kamptz led the Schutztruppe north from Douala to subdue the Tibati Sultanate in southern Adamawa. The German pretext was ending the Islamic slave trade. Tibati resisted fiercely, and the Bulu people on Adamawa's ...

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Hans Dominik | Public domain

Adamawa Wars: The Emir's Last Stand

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Dominik, Public domain. Zubeiru refused to accept defeat. He traveled to Sokoto, raised a large force of Fulani cavalry and infantry, and appealed to the Mahdist movement for support, calling for jihad against the German invaders. Despite having intelligence about the emir's plans, the Germans initially...

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Hans Dominik | Public domain

Adamawa Wars: Fire From Mecca

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geograph. Anstalt v. Wagner&Debes, Leipzig., Public domain. A fragile peace held until the summer of 1907, when two men recently returned from the Hajj ignited a Mahdist uprising. Mal Alhadji, inspired by the Koranic theologian Liman Arabu, began preaching the coming of the Mahdi near Maroua, gathering followers from both the Fulani and t...

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Geograph. Anstalt v. Wagner&Debes, Leipzig. | Public domain

Adamawa Wars: A Brief Dominion

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hans Dominik, Public domain. Germany's hard-won control of northern Kamerun would last barely a decade. When World War I reached Africa, French colonial troops and the British West African Frontier Force dismantled the German colony entirely in the Kamerun campaign. The emirates the Germans had conquered, th...

Read more: Adamawa Wars on Qualla

Image: Hans Dominik | Public domain