Political conditions in the Central Sudan in the late eighteenth century were in a state of extraordinary flux. Bornu had relinquished effective control of its Hausa clients, and Gobir's quest of empire served only to increase the level of internecine conflict. In the absence of a stable universal or regional imperium, the Sudanic interstate system was especially vulnerable to external and internal pressures. This breakdown of interstate political order coincided with a remarkable Islamic revival in the Central Sudan, and the convergence of these political and religious forces produced a radical departure from its historical pattern of empire building. Unlike the classical Sudanic pattern of foreign conquest or the ascendance of a single regional power, the early nineteenth century witnessed a massive series of civil wars that originated within and quickly spread beyond the Hausa states. These internal wars, motivated and legitimized by Islam, entailed far-reaching consequences: the overthrow of the Hausa states; the displacement of some of their ruling dynasties to successor states in exile (e.g., Daura, Maradi, Gobir, Abuja); the destruction of Bornu and its ancient Sefawa dynasty, and the re-formation of the state by al-Kanemi; the establishment of several new states on the south-western frontiers of Bornu (Katagum, Hadejia, Missau, Bauchi, Gombe, Muri, and Adamawa), the conquest of Nupe and Ilorin, and the incorporation of all these along with the Hausa states into a single political entity. Thus the jihad that began in 1804 transformed the structure of the interstate system in the Central Sudan by its destruction of the old order and the creation of a new multiethnic and multistate empire – the Sokoto Caliphate.