The country of Takrur and Ghana.. How did Islam spread in West Africa?

The entry of Islam to West Africa is a long story that combined military conquests, trade and mysticism, as the arrivals from North Africa, Arabs and Berbers, for centuries contributed to the spread of Islam there within a slow process, which was not planned like the first conquests, but despite that it made a radical change in the ranks of those The pagan peoples of the regions of "Songai", "Timbuktu", "Ghana", "Volo", "Coco" and other areas that are located today in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal in the Sahara, and even Ghana and Nigeria on the coasts of the South Atlantic.

The Muslims’ conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb in the first Hijri/seventh and eighth centuries was one of the most important reasons that made them interested in knowing the conditions of these peoples living in Central and Western Africa, despite their intense primitive lives deep in paganism and idolatry. We can see early indications of this in the ancient Muslim historians, such as Al-Masudi in the fourth century AH in his book “Morouj Al-Zahab” in which he described the people of Sudan as the nude, saying: Al-Hassan bin Al-Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Talib, peace be upon them, from the land of Morocco”[1], and Idris this is the founder of the Idrisid state in the Far Maghreb in the eighth century AD, who was a contemporary of the Abbasid state in its early era in the time of Harun al-Rashid.

Those peoples, although immersed in primitiveness and paganism at the time, but they formed kingdoms and semi-states that were subject to the laws of the tribe and leadership, and maintained these laws for hundreds of years. Al-Masoudi says about them (346 AH): “As for the other Abyssinia whom we have mentioned, who have been (settled) in Morocco (West Africa), such as the Zaghawa, the Koko, the Qaraqr, the Madida, the Maris, the Mubarras, the Malana, the Qumati, the Dawila and the Qurma, for each of these and other types of Abyssinians has a king and a house of kingdom”[2].

In the light of this primitivism and paganism, Islam shined its light on these peoples through a long time path that combined the methods of conquest, trade and mysticism, so how was the story of Islam with West Africa?

And how did those peoples accept the Muslims, whether they were conquerors, merchants, or mystics?

That is what we will see in our next lines.

Stages of the settlement of Islam

The first sign of Islam entering West Africa came from the Kingdom of Ghana, which at that time extended from Senegal in the north to the borders of present-day Ghana and Nigeria in the south, as described to us by the Andalusian geographer “Abu Ubaid al-Bakri” in the fifth century AH, when he narrated in his book that the Umayyad state sent an army Islamically to conquer the country of the “Western” Sudan in the early days of Islam, and soldiers from this army settled in the country of Ghana and carried Islam to its people. Likewise, the Egyptian historian “Al-Qalqashindi” in the eighth century AH confirmed this fact by saying: “And its people had converted to Islam at the beginning of the conquest” [3].

It seems that these areas, which the first conquerors entered, were located in the upper parts of the rivers of Niger and Senegal today. It was known at the time, which we know today as "African Sahara" and "West Africa".

The geographer “Al-Bakri” who visited some of these areas in the middle of the fifth AH / eleventh century AD stated that the king of the kingdom of “Gao”, which is located today in northern Mali and was the capital of the “Songhai” empire at that time, was a Muslim, and that the people of Gao were only loyal The Muslim is the ruler in their country, but a large percentage of the population of his kingdom were condemned by pagan religions. Indeed, Al-Bakri mentioned that the majority of the people of that kingdom were idolaters.

As for the Takrur kingdom, which consisted of areas located today in southern Mauritania, Mali and northern Senegal, its king, “Warjabi bin Rabis” converted to Islam in 1040AD/432 AH, and the historian “David Livingstone” (1872AD) saw that the Islam of the kingdom of Takrur preceded the establishment of the Almoravid state at the hands of Its great advocate "Abdullah bin Yassin", and its greatest princes, "Youssef bin Tashfin" (500 AH), the Islamic kingdom of Takrur later allied with the Almoravids, and the kings of that kingdom and its inhabitants also contributed to the spread of Islam to a large extent in the areas around them, and they were the first to rise group marches with their caravans from West Africa to Makkah Al-Mukarramah to perform the rites of Hajj [4].

Many historians, led by the scholar Ibn Khaldun, mentioned that the peoples of Mali became religious in Islam by the seventh century AH, especially during the reign of their famous king “Mansa Musa” (1337 AD), the most famous and richest king of Islam in West Africa, and the owner of the greatest treasures In the Middle Ages, he is also the most famous African king who performed the Hajj pilgrimage from Timbuktu - his capital - passing through the Sahara until his arrival in Cairo, accompanied by thousands of his followers and the people of his kingdom. On that journey, Mansa Musa spent tons of pure gold for the sake of God, and bore the expenses of thousands of his kingdom’s sons in the course of his pilgrimage, in addition to his generous gifts. On his return from Mecca, he was forced to borrow from some of the rich merchants in Egypt. Their head is "Siraj al-Din Ibn al-Kwaik al-Iskandariyah"[5].

After that date, the famous traveler Ibn Battuta visited large areas of West Africa, especially Timbuktu and its environs in Mali today, in the second half of the eighth century AH / fourteenth century AD, and found Islam had settled in this country, so much so that it needed some corn to be strengthened by him on his journey during his journey near Timbuktu; So he went down to her prince, and recounted about his journey, saying: "I found with him the book Al-Madheesh (On Asceticism and Ethics) by Ibn Al-Jawzi, so I began to read in it"[6], and this not only indicates the rooting of Islam, but also the arrival of many of its works and sciences to the people of those regions.

Three centuries ago, Ibn Battuta, when the Andalusian traveler Abu Ubaid al-Bakri visited the Kingdom of Ghana in the southwest in 460 AH/1067 AD, spoke about the presence of Muslims in large numbers in this kingdom, and that the King of Ghana, whose name was “Tankamin” at the time, “Mahmoud Al-Sira was a lover of justice.” As he describes it, and that his kingdom consisted of two metropolises or two large cities, then Al Bakri added: “One of them is the city inhabited by Muslims.

There is no doubt that Ghana’s location on the southern borders of the Sahara (Mauritania and southern Morocco) made it a link between the north and the south, and its control over the roads leading to gold mines, the currency of the Middle Ages, and the taxes it imposed on exports and imports, had an impact on its vast wealth and the attraction of Muslim merchants. To it from all sides, and who, over time, controlled the trade of the West African region and Ghana, and established close relations with its kings and nobles. Nevertheless, the armies of Ghana, which the traveler Bakri counted with 200,000 fighters, were a source of permanent attacks on the masked Muslim tribes who joined at the time under the banner of the Almoravid State. The nascent, which indicates the complexity of political and military relations, which were not without competition for control despite sharing in the bonds of faith and trade ties.

Conquests, Merchants and Sufism

The great credit for the entry of Islam and its spread to large areas of West Africa or Western Sudan, such as Mali, Ghana, Senegal and others, is due to the efforts of the Almoravid state and its first men, headed by Prince “Abu Bakr bin Omar Al-Lamtouni”, who worked on expanding in these areas and spreading Islam and settling preachers Among its tribes in the middle of the fifth century AH / eleventh century AD, this Almoravid prince continued to conquer the country of Ghana for 14 continuous years, until it was completed in the year 469 AH / 1076 AD approximately [8], and that kingdom extended at that time from southern Mauritania today to the borders of Nigeria, It is unfortunate that the Almoravid historical sources did not stand on these huge and important conquests as they stood on the details of the conquests and civilization of the Almoravids in Morocco and Andalusia, so they left us a documented tip of the iceberg of stories of Islam, its people and its culture in those lands bordering Sudan and the Arab Maghreb.

It was not only the princes and soldiers who won the honor of spreading Islam throughout the Sahara and its breadth, but Muslim merchants and Sufis also played the greatest roles in spreading Islam, so that the most important commercial cities in West Africa, visited by Muslim traders, became centers for preaching and spreading the true religion, such as the cities of Jinni and Timbuktu in Mali, and even Kano in Nigeria today. One of the most important roles played by Muslim merchants, especially the rich among them, is that they took charge of bringing scholars and jurists to these areas in order to increase the number of Muslims in them. The originals were sent to the famous Islamic institutes in Egypt or North Africa until they returned as imams to their people and families [9].

If the merchants and scholars played a great role in spreading Islam from this aspect, the Sufis who preferred asceticism and poverty to indulging in the pleasures of life and commerce also played a fundamental and pivotal role in spreading Islam and advocating it in West Africa. The merchants were interested in spreading Islam in the metropolises and economic central cities in West Africa, but the Sufis did not stop at these metropolises as much as they were interested in the remote villages and tribes in the deserts and forests since the Middle Ages until the present day. In the nineteenth century, Hajj Omar al-Fouti al-Takruri emerged from them, for example, who belonged to the famous Tijaniyya order and died in 1864 AD.

These are some of the lines of the story of the spread of Islam in central and western Sudan, or the Sahara and West Africa as we know them today, over a period of eight centuries, from the conquests of the Umayyads until the time of the Almoravids, and ending with the role of merchants and Sufis together. The course of this rich history, which needs further documentation and exploration of its sources and narrations, and that the incubators of science in the Arab world today spent enough for it to know it deeply, just as we spent it to know the worlds of the Turks and the Persians.

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