206 
RESIDENCE AT SOCCATOO AND MAGARIA 
places and Wady. Many of them had performed their pilgrimage 
to Mecca, and others had visited the empires of Turkey and Mo- 
rocco, as also Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, bringing back with them 
all the Arabic books they were able to beg or buy. 
In the year of the Hegira 1218, the old Mallem Sheik Othman 
Danfodio, Sheik of the Koran, became religiously mad, and is said 
to have died some years afterwards in that state. This Foulah or 
Fellata conqueror was styled Sheik of the Koran from his being 
perfect master of that book, not only being able to read it, and all 
the commentaries upon it, but also to repeat any part, and explain 
it, from memory. The laws of the Koran were in his time, and in- 
deed continue to be, so strictly put in force, not only among the 
F ellatas, but the negroes and Arabs, and the whole country, when 
not in a state of war, was so well regulated, that it was a common 
saying, that a woman might travel with a casket of gold upon her 
head from one end of the Fellata dominions to the other. 
His madness took a very unhappy turn. In the midst of a 
paroxysm, he would constantly call out that he should go to hell, 
for having put so many good Mussulmen to death. The Arabs used 
to take advantage of this, and tell him he was sure to be damned, 
unless he made amends by giving them presents to assuage the 
manes of their friends. USTot so with the Fellatas. These people 
had so great a veneration for their chief that, when his head was 
shaving, the hairs were carefully collected, and preserved by them 
in cases of gold and silver, and they used to come from all parts of 
the interior to get a sight of him, negroes as well as Fellatas. 
After his death, his son Mohamed Bello, the present sultan, 
governed the kingdom which his father had conquered ; but that 
part of the country to the westward of Houssa he left to his bro- 
ther’s son, Mohamed Ben Abdallah, while the eldest, Mohammed 
Bello, had Haussa, with all the countries to the south and east. 
Atego, the brother of Mohammed Bello, both by father and 
