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The New Cambridge History of Islam Edited by Maribel Fierro Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521839570 Online ISBN: 9781139056151 Hardback ISBN: 9780521839570 Paperback ISBN: 9781107456952

Chapter 5 - West Africa and its early empires pp. 144-158 Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521839570.007 Cambridge University Press

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West Africa and its early empires ulrich rebstock

Introduction The Arab conquest of North Africa was a prelude to a series of developments that reshaped the western part of the ancient world and the way it was viewed. When the general qUqba ibn Na¯fiq al-Fihrı¯, who was later to become the glorious eponym of numerous Saharan tribes, reached the Atlantic shores (shortly after 63/682), not only had the ‘westernmost’ part, al-Maghrib al-aqs.¯a, been discovered and included into the Islamic cosmos, but also the expansive energies of the advancing Muslim forces had been diverted to the north and south. Within a few decades the largest part of the Iberian Peninsula, al-Andalus, was incorporated into the territory of the Umayyad caliphate and brought into direct contact with events along the southern Mediterranean coast and in its hinterland. From there, Muslim traders and pious travellers ventured southwards, at first through areas familiar to them from their Arabian background, and then beyond what was regarded as the confines of the inhabitable world. They explored regions where during a long and changeable process a new geographical and cultural segment arose for the Islamic oecumene. Most of these regions had been unknown to the ancient world. But unlike the Romans, who had shielded their provinces of Mauritania and Africa with a wall (limes) from unpredictable Berber tribes roaming the northern Sahara, the Arabs were concerned not with the protection of a civilisation but with the spread of a religion that eo ipso ignored boundaries. And, unlike the ‘opening conquests’ (futu¯h.) achieved elsewhere by the Muslim armies against states and kingdoms, the Muslim penetration of the Sahara and its fringes neither required nor allowed organised military campaigns. From the very birth to the late fourth/tenth century, the adversaries that Muslim caravans ran into were local rulers, whose authority was restricted either to clusters of oasis settlements, or of nomadic tribal units that interlinked these settlements. Since none of the inhabited regions of the Sahara and downward 144

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West Africa and its early empires

towards the great Senegal and Niger rivers was encompassed by the 400 mm isohyets of annual rainfall at that time, the economic basis of its population rested not on agriculture, but on oasis-horticulture, cattle and trade. It was along the axes of this trade that the first Muslim Arabs and proselytised Berbers advanced southward, setting up temporary trading-posts at the routes’ intersections and bringing back with them as yet unheard reports of the ‘land of the blacks’ (bila¯d al-su¯da¯n). With these mostly anonymous records, Arabic historians and geographers enriched the knowledge they had inherited from Herodotus and Ptolemy. Until the mid-ninth/fifteenth century, when Portuguese captains sailed along the Atlantic coast and up the Senegal and Gambia rivers, the history of the Sahara and the adjacent trans-continental savannah-belt remained an Arabic domain, i.e. was written in Arabic and seen from the specific angle of its Arabian compilers. Moreover, until the famous historian Abu¯ qUbayd al-Bakrı¯ finished his Kita¯b al-masa¯lik wa’l-mama¯lik, with its section on North Africa, in 460/1068 in Almería,1 not only were most of these authors of eastern origin, but they were also merely known for their archival skills of second-hand narratives. With his Rih.la, ‘Travels’,2 the Moroccan globetrotter Abu¯ qAbd Alla¯h Muh.ammad ibn Bat.t.u¯t.a (d. 770/1368 in Marrakesh), who travelled across the Sahara to the western Su¯da¯n between 753/1352 and 754/1353, contributed the first eyewitness account to this narrative historical tradition.3 Although a great deal of this written tradition sprang from locally reported experiences that were transcribed and fused with the various literary traditions, the historiography of the Su¯da¯n essentially remained an external affair for almost a millennium. The so-called Timbuktu chronicles, composed within a few decades of the first half of the eleventh/seventeenth century, abruptly ended this autochthonous muteness and added a local and often puzzling perspective to this history.4 Inevitably, this specific genesis of Su¯da¯nic historiography produced a scale of historicity according to which myths and facts could not properly be separated. Only recently has the poor archaeological and epigraphic evidence of West Africa been seriously perceived as a valid source to counterbalance, or even decipher, the puzzles left behind by the literary text tradition.5

Early contacts and settlements The militant occupation of the urban centres in North Africa went along with a cumbersome spread of the Islamic faith and the Arabic language. Without the particular mixture of cooperation and resistance of the local Berber population, however, this goal could not have been accomplished, nor – as 145


The New Cambridge History of Islam

the earliest records attest – the penetration of the Sahara. From the Nafu¯sa mountains in Libya to Sijilma¯sa in the Moroccan west, various heterodox Islamic communities (predominantly Kha¯rijı¯s of Iba¯d.¯ı or S.ufrı¯ faith and dominated by Berber tribes) had installed independent regimes. From their centres, traders followed well-known routes into the Sahara and established regular relations that suggest temporary Muslim settlements in and even south of the Sahara at a very early stage. In the east, the oasis of Zawı¯la in the Fezzan (Fazza¯n), to where qUqba had already advanced, attracted Iba¯d.¯ı merchants from 144/761 onwards and developed into a small state that existed until the end of the sixth/twelfth century. From Zawı¯la, a forty-day trip led through the oasis of Kawa¯r, across the central Su¯da¯n, to the kingdom of Kanem (Ka¯nim) at Lake Chad (Ku¯rı¯), from where both the Nile (of Egypt) and the ‘Nile of Gha¯na’ (the Niger) were thought to issue. In the second half of the third/ninth century, not only was Kawa¯r inhabited by Muslims of partly Berber origin, but also Iba¯d.¯ıs had come to live in Kanem long enough to grasp the local language, probably Kanuri, and even to try their missionary skills on the local rulers. A century later, the defeated Hawwa¯ra followers of Abu¯ Yazı¯d Makhlad ibn Kayda¯d, who had rebelled against the Fa¯t.imids, withdrew en masse to the central Sahara. Abu¯ Yazı¯d was born in Ta¯dmakkat (‘This is Mecca’), around 272/885. This town, which is situated in the mountains of Ifoghas (Adra¯r-n-Ifoghas) at the northern end of the Tilemsi valley that reaches the Middle Niger at the city of Gao (or Gaogao, Kawkaw), attracted merchants from the north and south and developed into a linchpin of trans-Saharan trade. At Ta¯dmakkat, mainly salt mined by slaves in the neighbouring salt-pans but also imported weapons and even horses were traded for gold, black slaves and leather goods. It linked the northern ports of this trade route, Ghadames (Ghada¯mis), Wargla (Warjla¯n), Ta¯hert and Sijilma¯sa, from where the Mediterranean coast was supplied with sub-Saharan goods, with the regions west and south of the Niger bend. An Iba¯d.¯ı chronicle tells the story of a certain Tamlı¯ al-Wisya¯nı¯ who settled in Ta¯dmakkat, amassed a fortune and a treasury full of gold, and every year sent his zaka¯t (alms) of 5,000 dinars for the poor of his native town of Tawzar. The earliest unmistakably contemporary source of the Muslim population of Ta¯dmakkat is Ibn H.awqal, one of the few Arab geographers who himself travelled through the Maghrib and included his experiences in his S.¯urat al-ard. (Picture of the Earth), completed c. 378/988: As for the Banu¯ Ta¯namak, the kings of Ta¯dmakka, and the [S.anha¯ja] tribes related to them, it is said that they were originally Su¯da¯n whose skin and complexion became white because they live close to the North and far from the land of Kawkaw, and they descend on their mother’s side from the

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progeny of H . a¯m . . . They are the rulers, who combine leadership with learning, jurisprudence [fiqh], and political skill, as well as some knowledge of biographies and they are versed in traditions and history. They are the Banu¯ Ta¯namak.6

Virtually nothing is known of how these Banu¯ Ta¯namak came into contact with Islam and its tradition of learning. It was, perhaps, the steady inflow of merchant immigrants from the north that had turned them genealogically white and into Muslims. Tifinaq (Berber script) and Arabic inscriptions on cliffs and tombstones, the earliest of which date back to the year 404/1013f., leave no doubt about the existence of a heterogeneous Muslim community dominating Ta¯dmakkat around the turn of the millennium. Although dominant in the Arab geographical and historical literature, much less is known of the western parts of the Sahara until the time of al-Bakrı¯. The (ancient) myths of gold growing like carrots in the sand or like fruits on trees, the ‘silent trade’ and its dreadful black agents did not leave much room for credible reporting. The earliest description connects Gha¯na, this fabulous land of gold, with Sijilma¯sa at the northern fringe (sa¯h.il) of the Sahara. From there, presumably Iba¯d.¯ı merchants also established regular contacts with Su¯da¯nic partners of the Senegal valley. Literary and archaeological evidence attributes a major role in these trade relations, between the empire of Gha¯na and the tribal Berber realms in the western Sahara, to the town of Awdaghusht, situated in the Mauritanian Taga¯nt, not far to the north-west of Kumbi S.a¯lih., in all probability the capital of Gha¯na. According to al-Bakrı¯, shortly before 360/971 Awdaghusht had been subjugated by a ruler of the Berber tribe S.anha¯ja, which extended its authority over more than twenty ‘black’ kingdoms by making them pay the Islamic poll-tax (jizya). From the third/ninth century onwards, several of these S.anha¯ja and their rival Zana¯ta tribes, who controlled the routes through the western Sahara, had adopted Islamic features. The evident laxity of their faith, however, raised questions. At Awdaghusht a first ‘clash of cultures’ became apparent. Arabs and Berbers lived side by side, both at the expense of thousands of black slaves, under the precarious dependency on the Gha¯na authorities. Ibn H.awqal, who visited Sijilma¯sa, attested to these black African societies being deprived of religion and law and order. Various reports describe how Muslims, although enjoying highly respected consular roles and cultural immunities, nonetheless displayed ugly habits, in respect of both morals and religion. Furthermore, the Maghribi jurist Ibn Abı¯ Zayd al-Qayrawa¯nı¯ (d. 386/996) declared trade with bila¯d al-su¯da¯n to be reprehensible (makru¯h). These voices echo the rather unorganised dispersion of ruthless, risk-taking Muslim traders in the oases 147



of the Sahara and the trading-centres of the southern sa¯h.il, where by the beginning of the fifth/eleventh century small Muslim communities, more or less disconnected, had come into existence. Their domestic and religious bonds to their native towns remained strong, their proselytising efforts poor. Survival in such an isolated diaspora demanded concessions. The Almoravid movement that set out around 426/1035 to combat these concessions was to do much more than that.

The Almoravid reform movement and the rise of ‘Islamic’ kingdoms The splendid successes of the Almoravid movement in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula have somehow covered up its Saharan origin and farreaching repercussions on the Islamisation of the Su¯da¯n. Within forty years (Awdaghusht was taken in 446/1054f. and Gha¯na c. 468/1076) the veiled S.anha¯ja camel riders, the dreaded mulaththamu¯n of the Arabic sources, brought the western Sahara under their control – and then disappeared from the West African map as abruptly as they had appeared. This short-lived political success and its lasting impact on the modes of Islamic self-articulation in the Su¯da¯n cannot be explained without the characteristic fusion of nomadic mobility and religious austerity that the movement was based upon. Wondrous stories are told about how S.anha¯ja pilgrims were transformed by North African Ma¯likı¯ scholars into rigid believers and ideological leaders. qAbd Alla¯h ibn Ya¯sı¯n, son of a Jazu¯la mother of Gha¯na, was one of them. He managed to unite a confederation of S.anha¯ja tribes, among them partly Islamised and neophyte Guda¯la, Lamtu¯na, Jazu¯la and Masu¯fa, under a reformist message that was vividly depicted in the following description of his newly founded headquarters at Aratnanna¯: all dwellings of the riba¯t. (hence ‘al-Mura¯bit.u¯n’) were to be of equal height; lying, drinking and music were forbidden; neglect of prayer and improper behaviour were punished with the whip – and the bride-price was made affordable for everybody. Religious and social reform went hand in hand. Its legal reference was the Ma¯likı¯ school of law; its operational field was West Africa. The Almoravid movement set off what ended ultimately in the complete orientation of the Su¯da¯n towards the Ma¯likı¯ rite. Later reported ‘conversions’ to Islam, in reference to the people of Gao around 471/1078f., may simply refer to conversion from Iba¯d.ism to Ma¯likism. qAbd Alla¯h himself set the example for another central notion in West African Islam. He withdrew to the desert, refrained from consuming meals of legally doubtful origin, and wore the s.¯uf, the woollen garment of the Sufis. 148



Thus the figure of ‘al-Mura¯bit.’ entered the scene. The maraboutism of both medieval and modern Islam in Africa tells the story of the thorough Africanisation – with a French accent – of this figure. Even when the short political adventure of the Almoravids ended, their influence continued to work. Their S.aha¯ja followers, Juda¯la in the south, Masu¯fa in the east, entered regions that had hitherto come into contact with Islam only superficially, or not at all. South of the Senegal river, the king of Takru¯r together with his people, the sedentary Tukulor and the adjacent nomadic pastoralist Fulbe, converted to Islam. So did the king of Malal, who was fascinated by the magical powers of a passing Muslim scholar (mallam), although his Mandingo-speaking common subjects were not. Both kingdoms formed part of Gha¯na which did not recover from the Almoravid attack. All that can be gathered from the hearsay stories collected over the next two centuries and combined with the earlier reports in the Arabic sources points to a slow expansion of the Muslim faith among the Fulbe, Malinke, Bambara and Dyula populations in the regions between the rivers of Senegal, Volta and Upper Niger. Islam was thus imported into the areas from where the much-coveted gold and cola-nuts were exported. The rise of the empire of Mali in the late seventh/thirteenth century must be seen in the light of this steadily expanding system of economic and social relations between the savannah and forest regions in the south of Mali, and the growing trading-centres of Wala¯ta, Timbuktu, Gao, Ta¯dmakkat and Takadda¯ along the southern fringe of the Sahara. To the west of Timbuktu were the S.anha¯ja tribes of Mada¯sa and Masu¯fa, and to the east the Tuareg Berbers who controlled the salt mining and organised the profitable exchange of goods with their Su¯da¯nic counterparts. Trade and religion intermingled. Profit depended on legal security, communication and the mutual acceptance of cultural norms. The prosperity of the empire of Mali rested on the integration of Islamic norms and the consequent opening up to the wider Islamic world.

Mali and Timbuktu Although merely a lonesome lantern in the enduring darkness of the history of Islam in West Africa, the Rih.la (Travels) of Ibn Bat.t.u¯t.a furnishes essential clues to the understanding of what happened before and after his visit of Mali in 753–4/ 1352–3. He set off from Sijilma¯sa, crossed the western Sahara and after passing through Wala¯ta (I¯wa¯la¯tan) entered Mali at Za¯gharı¯, ‘a big village inhabited by traders of the Su¯da¯n called Wanjara¯ta with whom live a company of white men who are Kharijites of the Iba¯d.¯ı sect called S.aghanaghu¯. The whites who are Sunnı¯s of the Ma¯likı¯ school are called by them tu¯rı¯ [‘white man’ in Mandingo].’7 149



Later, when telling anecdotes of his visits to Gao and Timbuktu (Tunbuktu¯), he takes up the point of the cohabitation of black and white Muslim communities. Among the latter, odd habits regularly stir his bewilderment: women and men, even a judge (qa¯d.¯ı), behave indecently; instead of the paternal, the maternal line dominates hereditary rules; Muslim dignitaries address the kings at court rituals, and pagan poets, side by side with a khat.¯ıb, a ‘spokesman’, take part in Muslim festivals. His observations in the Su¯da¯n are illuminating. After all, he spent more time down south at Ka¯bara (Diafarabe?), Za¯gha (Diakha?) and Niani at the upper course of the Niger, than anywhere else in Mali. ‘The Su¯da¯n’, he wrote, possess some admirable qualities. They are seldom unjust, and have a greater abhorrence of injustice than any other people. Their sultan shows no mercy to anyone guilty of the least act of it. There is complete security in their country . . . They do not confiscate the property of any white man who dies in their country, even if it be uncounted wealth . . . They are careful to observe the hours of prayer, and assiduous in attending them in congregations, and in bringing up their children to them. If any one of them possesses nothing but a ragged shirt he washes it and cleanses it and attends the Friday prayer in it. Another is their eagerness to memorize the great Koran . . . Among their bad qualities are the following: The women servants, slave girls and young girls go about in front of everyone naked, without a stitch of clothing on them . . . Then there is their custom of putting dust and ashes on their heads as a mark of respect . . . Another reprehensible practice among many of them is the eating of carrion, dogs, and asses.8

On his way back via the oasis of Tuwa¯t to Sijilma¯sa, Ibn Bat.t.u¯t.a left Timbuktu on a camel’s back (100 mithqa¯l, about 430 g of gold, for a horse was too much for his purse) with a caravan that transported 600 slave-girls to Takkada¯ and Aïr. From there, different desert routes led north to Ghadames, the Libyan coast and, probably, even east through Kanem to Egypt. The geo-political orientation of Mali allowed, for the first time in West African history, a direct flow of goods and ideas from the rainforest regions to the Mediterranean and vice versa. This might explain the ‘Rex Melly’ on the Mappa Mundi of 739f./1339 drawn by the Mallorcan cartographer Angelino Dulcert. A few years later, the venerated poet–architect Abu¯ Ish.a¯q Ibra¯hı¯m ‘al-Sa¯h.ilı¯’ from Granada was buried in Timbuktu, next to a merchant from Alexandria. The Mansa kings of Mali maintained diplomatic relations with the Moroccan Marı¯nids and the Mamlu¯k sultans of Egypt. A century later, facing the ascent of the Songhay, they even requested assistance from the Portuguese. Mali claimed a seat in the concert of powers and did so by posing 150



as an Islamic dynasty and rule. In the external Arab sources – less in the Rih.la – this portrayal is mirrored by the gleam of the gold trade, and pilgrimage transferred to the Islamic heartlands. When in 724/1324 Mansa Mu¯sa¯ I (d. 737/ 1337), the fourth imperial pilgrim of Mali after Barmanda¯na, Ulı¯ and Sa¯kura¯, went to perform the pilgrimage (h.ajj) rituals in Mecca he left his country with one hundred camel-loads of gold. He returned in debt. But his generosity made the exchange rate of gold in Egypt drop 12 per cent for a period of twelve years. Mu¯sa¯’s reservation to prostrate himself before Sultan Ma¯lik al-Na¯s.ir while whispering ‘I make obeisance to God who created me’9 reflects the status Islam had gained in Mali, both at court and among the population. Alongside pagan office-holders, Muslims, whether white or black, were installed as khat.¯ıb or qa¯d.¯ı. The continuous extension of Mali authority over the Middle Niger – the ‘Zaas’ (or Zuwa¯s), the local Songhay kings of Gao, were finally subdued by the end of the seventh/thirteenth century and the Tukulor of Takru¯r as well soon afterwards – incorporated fairly diverse Muslim communities into the empire. Oral traditions circulated among the Wolof in which their king, Jolof, was converted to Islam by the Almoravids. The first Europeans to set foot in this region were impressed by Muslim counsellors and diviners at their courts. Most of them were foreigners: Zna¯ga (i.e. S.anha¯ja), Arabs, Tukulor and Mandinke. These two latter groups represented a diffusely growing black Islamic population under the rule of Mali. Among the Tukulor, conversion to Islam was closely connected to the Torodbe (sing. Torodo), zealous Muslims of different social status and ethnic origin. Their particular social and religious function regrouped them into family clans who later contributed decisively to the spread of Islam among the rural populations along the Niger, some distance into Hausaland. Quite similarly, the Mande-speaking Dyula of Soninke origin from the Volta basin were organised in clerical lineages. Their urban-based lifestyle, however, focused on trade and teaching. Owing to their activities during the second half of the eighth/fourteenth century, the route from the Arkan forests, one major source of the Mali gold, was opened to Jenne (old Zuburu) and thus connected to the trans-Saharan trading centres on the Niger. This shift immediately affected the fate of Wala¯ta and Timbuktu, roughly equidistant from Jenne and the salt-pans of Tagha¯za, and of Gao and Ku¯kiya, the old Songhay capital and eastern terminus of this spreading network. The riverbanks, where S.anha¯ja and Tuareg clans had started to settle, were becoming the main arena of distribution. There, local and long-distance trade fused, attracting groups from every direction and creating a new type 151



of political, economic and spiritual centre. Timbuktu was the first town to profit from this. Originally not more than a nomads’ summer-camp, it appears in 776f./1375 as ‘Tenbuch’ on the Catalan Atlas of Charles V, drawn by Abraham Cresques. Traders from Wala¯ta, Mali’s northern entrepôt, moved east to Timbuktu. From Jenne, Soninke merchants from Diakha and Ka¯bara turned north to the river, where lucrative contacts were expected. The story of the subsequent rise of Timbuktu, from a Masu¯fa settlement to the most glorious medieval centre of Islamic learning in the Sahel belt, is almost exclusively told by external sources. Their very nature purports a perspective that conveys more mysteries of an ‘Islamic city in Africa’ than it reveals of historical details sufficient to make possible an internal view of the organisation of the city and its development.10 Certainly, trade was its backbone. With the exchange of gold, slaves, salt, horses and weapons, fabulous fortunes were accumulated. And soon, ‘much business [was] done there in selling coarse cloth, serge and fabrics like those made in Lombardy’, as the Florentine traveller Benedetto Dei records from his visit in 874f./1470.11 Even more crucial than trade seems to have been the common subscription to the tradition of Islamic learning, which contributed more to the integration of the city than any other factor. By the ninth/fifteenth century, Timbuktu was compactly built. The Main Mosque, Jingerebir, probably founded by Mansa Mu¯sa¯ after his return from pilgrimage in 725f./1325, played a major integrative role, equalled only by the Sankore (‘white lords’) Mosque constructed later, in the second half of the ninth/fifteenth century, in the northern quarter of the city. The denominations of the mosques, the main forums for interaction among Muslim inhabitants and scholars alike, seem to imply – again – an ethnic segregation. Early references to immigrant scholars and their families, however, suggest a rather geographical set-up. From the west, mainly from Wala¯ta, Soninke, S.anha¯ja and Fulbe may have settled in one ward, while later incoming S.anha¯ja, Tuareg and Bara¯bı¯sh were drawn to the Sankore quarter – despite the fact that there, initially, ‘black’ scholars, presumably Soninke and Wangara, set the tone. The city’s growth under Malian rule rested considerably on that ethnic and linguistic intermixture, and on the Islamic institution of judgeship, the qad.¯ap, which ultimately became the main administrative and political function. Patrician families of scholar-notables and merchants of different origins alternately provided the office-holders. The Malian sovereignty, as represented by the Timbuktu-koy (‘king’), was reduced to military defence, namely against Mossi attacks from the south. By 836f./1433, Timbuktu, at that time led by the Su¯da¯nı¯ scholar and qa¯d.¯ı Muh.ammad Modibo al-Ka¯barı¯, or by one of his pupils of the Aqı¯t family, and assisted 152



by the powerful Tuareg chief Akil (Akillu) of the Maghsharen, revoked the Malian supremacy. Until 873/1468 the city preserved a partial independence. The alliance between the military ‘over-lordship’ of the Tuareg and the spiritual authority of the qa¯d.¯ı clans of the Masu¯fa Aqı¯t and the Tuareg And-Ag-Muh.ammad combined power, wealth and learning. The quasiautonomous existence of the ‘city-state’ of Timbuktu was abruptly ended by the inexorable rise of the Zaas. Sometime at the beginning of the century, they had moved their royal residence from Ku¯kiya to Gao. This strategical move was directed against the already weakening supremacy of the Mansas. A series of conquests followed that ultimately amended the entire stretch of river constituting the Middle Niger, inhabited by predominantly Muslim populations, and the trade passing through its western reaches – including the ‘golden’ axis Jenne–Timbuktu – to the Songhay heartland south of Gao. In 872/1468f. Timbuktu was violently taken by the Songhay king Sunni qAlı¯ Beri (reigned c. 868–98/1464–92). The city now entered the first of two sharply different phases under Songhay sovereignty, as distinguished by the principal sources for this period, the Timbuktu chronicles. While Sunni qAlı¯’s reign is depicted as harsh, alien and near-pagan, Askiya¯ al-H . a¯jj Muh.ammad’s and his successors’ rule (c. 898–999/1492–1590) is described as the era of a new order in which Islamic legitimacy and authority was rightfully secured, by accommodating Muslim scholars and clergies in and outside Timbuktu, the cradle of our chronicles’ authors.

The Songhay empire and the Africanisation of Islam The rise of the Sunni-Zaas and Askiya¯s of Gao was accompanied by a complex shift of emphasis in Su¯da¯nic Islam. Geographically it moved eastwards, thereby establishing new proximities to regions that hitherto had been only superficially touched by Islamic influences, in particular the vast hinterland between the Lower Niger, the River Benue and Lake Chad. More significant, however, was the shift, albeit ephemeral, of Islamic self-understanding from uniting socio-culturally fragmentised minorities, to its assertion as an imperial ideology. In retrospect, both processes are captured in the repercussions of the trip of a certain Muh.ammad ibn qAbd al-Karı¯m al-Maghı¯lı¯ (died c. 910/1505f.). He was a Berber preacher, whose missionary zeal led him from the Algerian oasis of Tuwa¯t to Takkada¯, Katsina, Kano and Gao, shortly before the end of the century. Wherever he passed through, he, or the pupils he left behind, propagated a twofold call (daqwa), in letter and in spirit: the contemporary kings and rulers of the Su¯da¯n had come to abuse Islam and rely on the political 153



and spiritual support of venal scholars (qulama¯p al-su¯p). Restoration of an Islamic order and individual salvation from hell could only be brought about by re-erecting justice (qadl), purifying and renewing religious practice (tajdı¯d), and leading a jihad against rebels (bugha¯t), false believers and apostates (murtaddu¯n), and all unbelievers (kuffa¯r). The details of this ‘reformist’ propaganda that centred around the concept of jihad are contained in a catalogue of ‘replies’ al-Maghı¯lı¯ composed for Askiya¯ Muh.ammad at his court in Gao.12 Al-Maghı¯lı¯’s project may be summarised as an ‘Islamic revolution from above’. All written sources more or less support the impression that Askiya¯ Muh.ammad’s coup d’état in 898/1493 against Sunni qAlı¯, as well as the former’s subsequent Islamic reform policy, was associated with this project. In actual fact, the transition from Sunni qAlı¯’s, the ‘mixer’s’, rule to the ‘just government’ of al-amı¯r al-h.¯ajj Muh.ammad Askiya¯, seems to have been less drastic. In Gao, and especially in its sister city Saney, as well as in Ku¯kiya, small Muslim communities had been settling for almost half a millennium. Local Arabic epigraphy witnesses their growing importance for, and intermingling with, the old Songhay dynasties. Islamic insignia, both at court and in architecture, are well attested. In contrast, the thinness of the Islamic veneer beyond the urban centres, south and east of the riverside territories where the first Askiya¯s rapidly expanded their empire, caused severe conflicts for the ruling elites. Perhaps the most sensitive conflict for the implementation of an Islamic government arose from the necessary distinction between Muslim and nonMuslim. According to Islamic law, the sharı¯ qa, the former could not be enslaved. Slave-trade, however, had become increasingly important for the Songhay economy. Therefore, Islamicity had to be defined in terms of orthodoxy. The laxity our sources ascribe to Sunni qAlı¯ and his government did not disappear under the Askiya¯s. Pagan shrines continued to be venerated and rapacious governors to be accused of unjust taxation; Askiya¯s themselves were accused of leading an immoral life or only poorly concealing their deficient Islamic faith. The legally sanctioned specific treatments of different types of believers and unbelievers respectively allowed for an inherently Islamic social stratification. At the top were the much cherished and powerful groups of Muslim scholars, often identical with, or related to, local governors and rich merchants. At the bottom, the slowly progressing Islamisation of the Su¯da¯nic peasantry offered much prey for this policy. In an angry report on the problem of the illegal enslavement of ‘black’ (su¯da¯n) African people, Ah.mad Ba¯ba¯ al-Timbuktı¯ (963–1036/1556–1627), the most prominent descendant of the Aqı¯t family, still refers to the propaganda al-Maghı¯lı¯ had spread. Two centuries later, the leader of the Fulbe jihad in Hausaland, qUthma¯n dan Fodio, 154



even copied the ‘Replies’ of al-Maghı¯lı¯ into his proper jihad-treatise The Lamp of the Brethren (Sira¯j al-ikhwa¯n).13 The role the qulama¯p of Timbuktu, Jenne and Ka¯bara was entrusted with by the Askiya¯ administration reflects the Islamisation of the Songhay state. Power was disputed in terms of Islamic norms. Al-Maghı¯lı¯’s propagation of the mujaddid (‘renovator’) and his mission, and his distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims, were grounded in the collective self-image of constituting a sovereign part of the Islamic umma. It fostered the bacillus of the ‘dubious’ Muslim, the most motivating force in the future expansion of Islam, indigenous in the Su¯da¯n; and it provided ambitious leaders of dubious couleur with sharp-tongued ‘reformist’ arguments.

Kanem-Bornu and Hausaland Al-Maghı¯lı¯ had also visited Kano. He ordered King Rumfa to cut down the sacred tree under which the city’s mosque had been erected: the symbolic end of the symbiosis of Islam and traditional religion, of Muslim leadership and divine kingship. At about the same time, Mai (king) qAlı¯ Ghaji ibn Dunuma (reigned c. 874–909/1470–1503) of Bornu who, on his way to Mecca, met with al-Suyu¯t.¯ı in 889/1484 in Cairo, took the title khalı¯fa – as did Askiya¯ Muh.ammad a few years after him – and launched a reformist campaign against ‘dubious’ believers in the western neighbourhood. Quite obviously, the long-lasting isolation of these regions from the west had come to an end. The occasional appearance of Islamic titles, Arabised proper names and – contemporaneously with the ascent of the Askiya¯s of Gao – ‘reformist’ ideas point to the increasing integration of the Chad region into the Islamic traffic of the Niger bend, from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards. Oral traditions, on the other hand, claim that Kanem, situated at the north-eastern end of Lake Chad, became Muslim in the sixth/twelfth century under the legendary Arab hero Sayf ibn Dhı¯ Yazan, who was, in fact, the hero of a mythical romance of later Mamlu¯k times. A few remarks of Arab geographers, among them the Andalusı¯ Ibn Saqı¯d (d. 685/1286), confirm the presence of Muslim scholars at the court of the ‘Sayfids’ at Njimi, but also their tensions with the non-Muslim traditionalists. In a letter to the Mamlu¯k sultan of Egypt, a Kanemi mai complains in 794/1391f. that Arabs were enslaving his Muslim citizens. Frictions like these may have led to the exodus of the mai and his followers to the south-western end of the lake, and to the foundation of Bornu around its capital Ngazar(ga)mu (Birnin Gazargamu). The thriving state of Bornu was facing a pagan south, Bagirmi, which was their hunting ground for slaves, and the territory of the Hausa states in the 155



west. About the time of the rule of qAlı¯ Ghaji, some of the Hausa city-states (birni, pl. birane) extracted tribute to Ngazargamu. In Kano and Katsina, kings (sarki, pl. sarakuna) ruled over a feudal society. Excluded from both military service and court rituals, Muslim immigrants, Fulbe Torodbe (Hausa: Toronkawa) from Mali, had settled in rural enclaves and introduced a modest tradition of Islamic learning in the region. The Hausa chronicle, moreover, tells the story of Abu¯ Bakar, the son of a Wangara trader from Mali, who became the religious teacher of the Kano Prince qUmar ibn Kanjeji (r. 813–24/1410–21). Returning from a longer stay in Bornu, this Abu¯ Bakar convinced his royal pupil to abdicate and withdraw from his sinful courtly life to a life of repentance (tawba).14 Politically as well, Kano remained under the domination of Bornu. From there the trade routes led up north and from there government patterns were imitated. As in Bornu, the rulers of Kano kept state councils and highly decorated eunuchs; but they also welcomed shurafa¯p, Muslims of noble (Arab) blood, and other Muslim immigrants. Anecdotes belonging to the first half of the tenth/sixteenth century allow us to conclude that Islamic nomenclature was officially accepted at the kings’ courts. Individual conversions seem to have occurred at the upper level and at the fringes of the society, but the majority adhered to the traditional religious belief and performed the sacred rituals. Thus, the Sahelian world was, by the late ninth/fifteenth century, almost entirely ruled over by rulers who, to varying degrees, took advantage of the legitimacy of Islamic institutions and legal norms provided for their pursuit of authority. The Islamic features we hear about have demonstrative functions and served as promising ingredients in a traditional ceremonious despotism. But they undoubtedly prepared the way for the syncretistic practices that were spreading among the populations – and nourishing the coming Muslim reform movements. Notes 1. Abu¯ qUbayd al-Bakrı¯, Kita¯b al-mughrib fı¯ dhikr bila¯d Ifrı¯qiya wa’l-Maghrib, Paris, 1965. 2. Ibn Bat.t.u¯t.a, Tuh.fat al-nuz.z.¯ar fı¯ ghara¯pib al-ams.¯ar wa-qaja¯pib al-as.fa¯r, ed. C. Defrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages d’Ibn Batoutah, vol. IV, Paris, 1858 and reprints [generally referred to as Rih.la]. 3. Two excellent compilations of the Arabic sources for the medieval history of the Su¯da¯n and West Africa facilitate the access to this material: J. M. Cuoq, Receuil des sources arabes concernant l’Afrique occidentale du VIIIe au XVIe siècle (bila¯d al-su¯da¯n), Paris, 1975; Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history, trans. J. F. P. Hopkins, ed. and annot. N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, Cambridge, 1981.

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4. qAbd al-Rah.ma¯n ibn qAbd Alla¯h al-Saqdı¯, Taprı¯kh al-su¯da¯n, ed. and trans. O. Houdas, Paris, 1964; Mah.mu¯d Kaqti ibn al-H.a¯jj al-Mutawakkil Kaqti, Taprı¯kh al-fatta¯sh (Paris, 1964); [Notice historique], untitled anonymous chronicle, partially trans. O. Houdas in Mah.mu¯d Kaqti, Taprı¯kh al-fatta¯sh, 326–41. 5. P. F. de Moraes Farias, Arabic medieval inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, chronicles and Songhay–Tua¯reg history, Oxford, 2003, xxxiii–lxi. 6. Corpus of early Arabic sources, 50–1. 7. Ibn Bat.t.u¯t.a, in Corpus of early Arabic sources, 287. 8. Cited from E. W. Bovill, The golden trade of the Moors, London, 1978, 95, and Corpus of early Arabic sources, 296–7. 9. Reported by the sultan’s chief of ceremony (mihmanda¯r), in Corpus of early Arabic sources, 270. 10. E. N. Saad, Social history of Timbuktu: The role of Muslim scholars and notables 1400– 1900, Cambridge, 1983, 2–3. 11. Bovill, Golden trade, 112. 12. J. O. Hunwick (ed. and trans.), Sharı¯ qa in Songhay: The replies of al-Maghı¯lı¯ to the questions of Askiya al-H . ¯ajj Muh.ammad, New York, 1985. 13. Cf. U. Rebstock (ed. and trans.), Die Lampe der Brüder (Sira¯g˘ al-ihwa¯n) von qUtma¯n b. Fu¯dı¯: Reform und Ğiha¯d im Su¯da¯n, Walldorf-Hessen, 1985. 14. H. R. Palmer, Bornu, Sahara and Sudan (New York, 1970), 184f.

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