Nana Asma'u

Nana Asma'u was a scholar, poet and teacher of the Sokoto Caliphate, a daughter of Usman dan Fodio. She wrote more than sixty works in Arabic, Fulfulde and Hausa, including histories of the jihad, elegies and religious verse, and advised her brother Muhammad Bello. She organised the 'yan taru, a network of women teachers who carried Islamic education to rural women, and she remains a model of female learning in northern Nigeria.