Abd al-Rahman Tsatsa

Shehu Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad al-Nufawi (c. 1756 – c.1829), also known as Tsatsa or Chacha, was a Nupe Muslim scholar, teacher, and military leader. One of Usman dan Fodio's flag-bearers during the Sokoto jihad, he became a prominent reformist figure in the spread of Islam across Nupeland. He was celebrated as both a pious scholar and a commander who sought to establish Islamic governance among his people, and later remembered in oral and written traditions as a martyr and saintly reformer.

According to the Nupe scholar Alkali Umar b. Muhammad (died 1918), Abd al-Rahman was born at Abaji, on the eastern marches of Nupeland, to an Arab father of Sharifian descent and a Nupe mother who gave her son traditional facial scars of her people. The Scottish explorer Hugh Clapperton, who visited the region in May 1826, was in contact with Abd al-Rahman:I had a letter from the learned Abdurahman, of Kora, a noted chief of banditti, and who once, with his followers, overran Nyffé, and held possession of the capital six months. He now keeps the town of Kora, a day's journey to the north-east, and is much feared by Mohamedan and Kafir. He is a native of Nyffé. He is particularly anxious that I should visit him, as he wants my acquaintance, and begs I will give him the Psalms of David in Arabic, which he hears I have got. His letter was written on part of the picture of the frontispiece of an European book, apparently Spanish or Portuguese. He says he has something to communicate to me, which cannot be done but by a personal interview; but unless he come to Koolfu I told his messenger, I could not see him. Clapperton's description of Abd al-Rahman as a "chief of banditti" suggests his marginalisation and outlaw status by that period. These manuscripts are among the earliest known examples of Nupe Ajami, and are today preserved in the Northern History Research Scheme collection at the Ahmadu Bello University Library, Zaria. Both sources imply that the Caliphate initially regarded him as a legitimate ally in the jihad. The later account of Waziri Muhammad Junaidu, in Ta'nis al-Ahibba' bi-dhikr Umara' Gwandu (1958), presents the most comprehensive account from a Sokoto perspective.