Islamic education in Hausaland was organized around movement between teachers and places. A Bornu song presents departure from home as necessary for serious study, even when a child’s father was already a cleric. Teachers could be relatives, but students were often expected to seek instruction elsewhere. These journeys created relationships that endured across distance and linked local communities to wider networks of Muslim scholarship.

Traditions concerning al-Maghili portray him as an early missionary and teacher in Hausaland. One account says that he wrote out the Koran from memory because he had brought no books, taught the rules of the faith in one Hausa center, and then continued to Katsina. The contrast between Kano, Katsina, and Bornu in this tradition suggests an early dependence of Hausaland on Bornu for religious learning, although the account is explicitly described as semi-legendary.

The movement of clerics continued through pilgrimage and return journeys. Learned men from the western Sudan travelled through Hausaland, and one pupil of al-Maghili became qadi in Katsina, remaining there until his death. The Wangarawa pioneers of Islam in Kano were also associated with Mali and with intended pilgrimages, while repeated appeals by the Sarkin Kano were reportedly needed to prevent them from continuing toward Arabia.

These connections carried more than religious doctrine. The passage states that Hausa words for reading and writing derive from Kanuri, and that Fulani who passed through Hausaland toward Bornu in the mid-fifteenth century introduced religious sciences previously unknown there. Some travellers remained behind, leaving scholars, slaves, and people exhausted by the journey, thereby making long-distance mobility a force in the social and intellectual development of Hausaland.