Yola

Yola lies on a sandstone ridge above the Benue River, in the upper Benue country where the land rises toward the Mandara Mountains to the north and the Shebshi Mountains to the south. Its name comes from the Fulfulde word for a great plain, a fitting description of the wide flat ground along the river. Before the Fulbe jihad, the hills and valleys here were held by smaller chiefdoms such as Bagale, whose people farmed the uplands, kept cattle, and traded through the river valley.

The Sokoto jihad of Usman dan Fodio spread into the upper Benue in the early nineteenth century. Its leader here was Modibbo Adama, a Fulani scholar who built a Muslim emirate across the Adamawa country and fought the chiefdoms around it.