LESSON 25
ISLAM ACROSS THE SAHARA TO WEST AFRICA

There was little contact between North and West Africa in Roman times, but with the camel the Arabs and their Berber allies moved freely over the desert. They were attracted by gold and slaves. `Uqba raided deep into the Libyan desert, demanding 360 slaves from each town he came to. Far to the west, abīb ibn-abī-`Ubayda, grandson of `Uqba, raided Sūs (southern Morocco) and the land of the Blacks. "He achieved a victory over them such as was never seen and got all the gold he wanted. He also captured some girls." For many years gold was the main export of West Africa to the north, and slaves the main export of Central Africa. `Uqba's exploits entered West African legend, and he is made out to be the ancestor of the western Saharan Kunta tribe and of the Fulani.

While this exploration was going on, in North Africa Arab oppression of the Berbers made them revolt and adopt Khārijism, which taught the equality of Muslims. The Berbers took Ceuta and enslaved its inhabitants, ending the existence of the Christian community which had a tolerated status under the terms of surrender 10 years previously. The Berbers then moved east, defeating the Arabs. An army of 12,000 men was sent against them in 741; the Berbers defeated this army as well and went on to take Qayrawān in 755, holding it until 761. Tāhirt in western Algeria became the capital of a Berber Khārijite state. This state controlled all the early trade across the Sahara because it controlled the northern terminals of the trade routes. A western route originated at Sijilmāsa, passed through the salt-mining desert town of Taghāza, went on to Audaghust, a Muslim settlement on the southern edge of the desert, and 15 days further to the capital of Ghāna. Another route led from Wargla to Tadmakka, another Muslim settlement on the edge of the desert, and 9 days further to Gao. An eastern route led from Tripoli, for a time under the control of Tāhirt, through the new town of Zawīla and on to Kanem on the edge of Lake Chad. Ibādite Khārijism prevailed along all the routes to sub-Saharan Africa until the coming of the Murābits in the mid-11th century.

The various Berber tribes of the desert quickly became Muslim as a result of contact with the Arabs and integration in the trans-Saharan trade. An interesting characteristic of the early Muslim outposts in the desert and the Sahel was their separate Muslim identity. Awdaghust and Tadmakka served as exclusively Muslim jumping-off points in close reach of Ghāna and Gao respectively. Moreover, Ghāna and Gao each consisted of two separate towns, one for the indigenous people and their king, and the other for the Muslim foreign population. Little is known about the life of the Muslim Arab communities in Kanem, except that Zawīla was their important relay point for exporting slaves to the north, and they must have had settlements within Kanem itself.

The development of trans-Saharan trade had an important political impact on West Africa. When economic life was rather simple, political structures were simple, but the need to organize long-distance trade favoured the formation of large kingdoms or empires, and the Arabs provided the necessary horses and arms. As these kingdoms grew, their rulers desired the presence of Muslim traders and clerics and, even though few became Muslim before the 11th century, they found Islam attractive for several reasons:

1. The Muslims brought the economic advantages of long-distance trade; these advantages would be greater or surer if the king accepted Islam himself, since it gave him citizenship in the Muslim umma with equality and brotherhood with his trading partners far away. He could then expect respect and trust from them in his dealings, putting to rest al-Qayrawānī's warning about trading in the land of the Sūdān. As Islam gained ground, large scale marketing and transport became a Muslim monopoly and this put pressure on traders to join Islam to become part of the club.

2. The presence of Muslim scholars was welcome also because they provided an important element in the infrastructure of long-distance trade, namely, written communication in Arabic, the only international language of West Africa until the introduction of Portuguese on the coast in the 15th century and French and English in the 19th century. This made it possible to order goods from a distance and maintain a system of banking or credit. At the same time, Muslims provided the civil service in the expanding Sūdān kingdoms, because their literacy made them the only ones capable of administration. As Muslims literate in Arabic spread throughout the Sahel with the traders, there were few places of importance where a traveller might not find an interpreter and an introduction to the local society, thus eliminating the necessity of the "silent trade" between peoples of different languages.

3. Complementing or competing with the traditional religion, Muslim clerics had a wide selection of religious medicine to offer, with specific prescriptions for every conceivable disease or any other problem of life, in the form of drink (with ink washed from a slate with Qur'ānic writing), talismans to wear, prayers to say, or other things to do. The Arabic text of the Qur'ān was looked upon as something powerful and beautiful itself, whose secrets could be mastered with patient study and initiation, as could the secrets of the traditional religion. Islamic rites of worship were also attractive for Africans because they were done in common and had an atmosphere of both dramatic festivity and seriousness.

4. Muslims tolerated, temporarily, a king accepting Islam and at the same time continuing to practice the traditional religion. The king would want to straddle the fence this way because he was expected to be the father and high-priest for all his people. If a significant number of them or even a few prominent citizens adopted a particular religion that did not threaten his power, he would be expected to lead them in their religious practice, thus providing religious leadership to all groups, and not allowing them to go into political opposition.

5. The kings found Islam a convenient support to their imperial authority, since it was a unifying ideology bridging the many tribes and presenting them with a wider brotherhood, citizenship or nationality. This produced the phenomenon of "state Islam", whereby Islam was controlled and used to promote the interests of the rulers.

6. A psychological factor disposing people to convert to Islam is the international experience of those involved in long-distance trade. Traditional religion was bound to a village political system and culture with its local deities, spirits and ancestors, whereas inter-tribal economic and cultural interaction required a corresponding universalist social, political and religious structure. The Islamic view of the universe as governed by one God who is to be worshipped in one way by one world-wide community of believers explains why its champions were primarily the merchant class and the clerics who accompanied them. The farmers did not opt for Islam at all, and their rulers straddled the fence, since their interests were balanced between the traditional local society and the wider world that commerce and empire exposed them to. Pastoral peoples, like the Fulani, were as ambivalent as the kings, because their kinship bonds fostered tradition, but their migrations exposed them to a wider society and new ideas.

7. Accepting Islam would also give the king legal immunity from attack by other Muslims. Since raids by desert nomads upon the settled farmers were very frequent anyway, and raids by Muslims upon unbelievers were encouraged by religion, according to the common belief of Muslims, a Sūdān king would have strong motivation to become a Muslim as a preemptory defence against attack.

QUESTIONS

1. Explain why trans-Saharan trade developed when the Arabs took over the Maghrib.
2. Explain the effect of trans-Saharan trade on the politics of West Africa.
3. Explain the attraction of West African kings to Muslim traders and Islam.

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West Africa and Islam

Lesson 26—»